 Here's an interesting question. How long should a run be? Like how long should you run for? I mean let's say you're a beginner, intermediate, I don't know, and you're wondering like just how long should I run for in order to get a benefit from the running? How long should I run for if I'm training for 10k? What if I'm training for a marathon? How long should you go running for? Long to go running. It's a pretty difficult question. It's kind of an impossible question to answer. In a sense it's kind of like asking how heavy is a rock? I mean there are all kinds of sizes and weights and you can run for short times and long times. You can run hard, you can run easy. That all matters you know. But in general let's just start at the beginning. Let's suppose you are a beginner. How long should you go running for? Well if you're a total beginner I would just go for a walk. I would just go for a walk three times a week and just get that habit in. Let's say during the middle of the run, sorry the middle of the walk, you just start running and you run for like as much as you feel comfortable with. Say it's maybe it's five minutes. Maybe it's one minute. Maybe you can go 10 minutes. But that's probably enough. Then you stop running and you keep walking and you finish your walk and you do that for a week or two. Then eventually you'll be able to build up how long you're running for each time and eventually you're out there going for a run. That's typically how beginners start running. If we're talking from a physiological standpoint like training, how much should you run in order to get a training benefit, in order to stimulate the development of your aerobic system, of your heart, of your essentially build fitness. Well you know anything more than you're used to will typically stimulate in effect. But let's just put an number to it anyway. I would say 20 minutes. 20 minutes is a good minimum amount of running. Once you're through the beginner phase of walking and running, if you can go for a 20 minute run, and this is actually true for even top level athletes, a 20 minute run will have some benefit to it. It's enough to get the system going. You know, it's typically the time it takes to warm up, right? So basically that means it's the time it takes to get everything flowing and things happening. After 20 minutes, if you stop your run, after 20 minutes, suppose you do that three times a week, that's an hour per week, that's pretty good. That is going to give you some bang for your buck. Of course, from then on up, it's just almost the more the better, unless you, as long as you don't get injured. So if you go for 30 minutes, it's probably better than 20 minutes, 45 minutes, even better. Going for an hour, that's awesome. A lot of things, good things happen when you go running for an hour. But you've got to remember also that if you had a hard workout yesterday, perhaps today you need a rest day. Or if you, if you can tolerate some running, perhaps today 20 minutes would be perfect. That's what a lot of elite athletes do. You know, it's all about polarizing your training. And as a running coach, when I make a training program, I try to polarize the training so that we have, we make the hard days harder and the easy days easier, which can also mean making some days longer and bigger with more volume, more time running and other days smaller with less time running. So suppose I had a two and a half hour run yesterday, I might just take a rest day today. Or if I'm going running, perhaps I'll just do it for 20 minutes, half an hour is just to get some blood flow and to get a little bit of a stimulus, but while still recovering from your day before. So in the upper end of the spectrum, how long should a run be? Well, ultramarathon runners, they might go train and do trainings run that training runs that last for like six hours, but that's pretty extreme. Even a four hour run could be beneficial for an ultramarathon runner. If you're talking marathon training, typically most marathoners are, you know, better off just running two hours to perhaps three hours for their long run. That means once a week, the other days of the week, they'll probably just do 45 minutes, an hour, an hour 15, perhaps even one and a half hour, 90 minutes. But you know, the thing is at the high level and at a low level, it's all about that cumulative effect of steadily chipping away at it day after day. Anyone can handle or not anyone, but it's easy to handle a day of, you know, a couple of hours of running. But what if you're next, the next day as well, you need to do it and again and again and again over time accumulating a lot of time running, that's what's stimulating the best effect. So how long should you run? It depends on how much time you have. It depends on how fast or how much you would like to improve. It depends on what you've done before. It depends on your current fitness. There are so many factors and variables that makes it very difficult to answer. But I think I've answered it for the beginners, you know, start walking, doing some running, eventually you get to 20 minutes. That's a decent amount of time to run. And as I said, most people, even the higher level athletes, run between half an hour and three hours for most of their runs. And even more so, 45 minutes to one and a half hour, that probably covers 80% of the runs that most people do. So there you have it. The idea here is that after you go beyond say two hours, two and a half hours, there's the principle of diminishing returns kick in, which means that you can go longer, but the benefit that you get from it in terms of stimulating adaptations, getting fitter, are probably not worth the extra risk of getting injured. So running more than three hours, there's a high injury risk obviously. But the benefits you get from running three hours versus running two hours, maybe it's not that great. Maybe it's better to just do that two hour run and then come back tomorrow and do another run of say one hour and you cover three hours in two days instead of one. That's a little bit better. And intensity plays a role here as well. Of course, if you're running hard, you cannot run for as long as if you're running easy. So you've got to balance intensity and volume. Yeah, I think that's a good answer. How long should run be? If you have any questions, of course, you can always contact me at the long trail Facebook page, or you can contact me on my website, MGD coaching, there's a link in the description. I offer customized training plans and coaching calls via Skype. So feel free to contact me there and of course, subscribe and stay tuned for more videos. Thanks for watching.