How to Have Comfortable Long Distance Training Runs

       There are a lot of preparations to be made before you actually do a long distance run.  I have had the immense chagrin to be doing marathon training for years.  Some of my runs went as long as eight hours.  Silver lining: I pay attention to what I am doing and think of ways to make the runs not (as) terrible.  Let's cover the day before, of and after your waste of a good Saturday or Sunday.

Day Before

1. The start of the hydration process.  The average-sized American should be drinking 2.2 liters per day, plus or minus .5 liters on the heavier or lighter end, respectively.  On the day before a long run, add another liter to that 2.2 base level, plus or minus .5 liters.   
2. Get enough sleep.  You should be doing this already.  The obvious reasons: the more mentally alert you are, the more enjoyable the run.  Sleep is also what turns all of the calories you consumed during the previous day into adenosine diphosphate, the building block for your body's energy.  No sleep means no energy.  If you like to party, one day this whole trendy long distance running will catch up to you.  If it has not, you are probably still an undergrad and lack of sleep is how you thrive.  In that case I hate/envy you.  Also, do not major in humanities.    
3. Gear prep.  No matter what time of the day you do your run or whether you are a morning or afternoon person, you are always going to be scatterbrained if you prep your gear immediately before.  It is your unconscious way of procrastinating.  Your body knows what it is in for.  Here is what your gear should include when you prep the day or night before: 
1. Cell phone.  You never know if or when you might burn out or keel over during the run.  Best to have a cell phone if you end up needing to call a cab or get a lift to bring your sorry derrier back to the house.  Though hopefully you will do enough of the other preparations to prevent a walk of shame.  
2. ID.  This is for when you do actually keel over.  The ID will save your family and friends the hassle of identifying your body at the morgue.  More likely, it will come in handy if you need to make an emergency purchase and you need proof of identity for when you use a...
3. Credit card.  As will happen from time to time, you will run out of energy and you will need calories.  Keep this on you just in case you need emergency sustenance.  On long run days, I like the high-brow, gourmet products of Hostess and Krispee Kreme.  And the great temple of 7-11 is ubiquitous and known for selling both of these patron saints of excess.   
4. Water.  Some people like the Camelback and some like to hold their bottle.  If you are running longer than an hour, you will need Gatorade.  Do not opt for the zero calorie kind.  If you do, you may need to make that 7-11 intermission.  
5. Food.  If you are unwilling or unable to stop at a convenience store, carrying anything carbohydrate rich will do.  This may be the only time you will eat something sugary.  Though fat has more calories per gram, carbohydrates can get packed quite easily into any baked good.  Once you start gassing out, the food that will snap you out of it the fastest will be a white starch.  This is because it is the simplest food for your body to turn into glucose.  A pastry can have you back to your old self in as little as 15 minutes.  I recommend food for runs longer than 2 hours, as this is the most likely time to bonk.  
6. Toilet paper.  Sometimes you may find yourself needing to drop the kids off without a port.  I try to get this done before a run.  Even if you do, you will run into this problem, as running is a "mechanical laxative."   
7. Vaseline or body lubricant.  Always have this.  Even at the first sign of a little bit of rubbing, apply immediately.  It is the difference between a painful run versus a painful and stinging one.  A shower with a freshly-made rash is an even worse experience, worthy of a Wilhelm Scream.  All that salt caked on and in your skin and hair gets washed off in the shower and into your new rashes.  It is as painful as applying iodine to cuts.  Except these are much larger than cuts and on sensitive areas: your inner thighs, butt crack, nipples and armpits.
8. Camelback.  You will need something to carry items 1-7.  So you might as well have something that is built for carrying water.  I always carried a Camelback for ultra training.  Not only does it carry your water and valuables but the extra weight serves as a great training buffer.  When race day comes, you won't have to worry about any of the aforementioned items; aid stations provide all of them.  Even inmates get a last meal.  Consider your training gear to be like the warm up swing of two or three bats before stepping up to the plate; psychologically you will feel less encumbered and will actually be faster.
4. Exercise the day before.  If you are prepping for the long run, chances are you are working out the day before too.  We distance runners are all the same: we are our own schizophrenic dom-sub couple.  The workout the day before should not kill your legs. The last thing you want is going into a long run with depleted glycogen and overwhelming soreness.  Be sure that your weight day is not an exclusive leg day.  Fellow split trainers, you know what this means.  A little soreness from a couple of leg exercises is okay.  On the extreme, the agony from a leg-day is going to make your run reminiscent to Paths of Glory.  Another option is a swim or a short, intense cardio session.  I like doing interval biking or stairmill.  This kind of cardio kills but does not affect the long run.  This is because interval training does not use the same muscle fiber types or energy pathways as endurance activity.  This same logic applies to why leg strength training is also okay to do.  You should also be lifting weights anyway, you pansy.
5. Carb Load.  A typical endurance athlete will have a diet that is 60% carbohydrates.  You should be eating 67-70% carbohydrates the day before a long run.  You can get away with 60 but you will have a higher likelihood of hitting the wall.  Not hitting the wall - at least not early on - will guarantee a better run.  There should be no reason to overeat so long as you increase the percentage of carbohydrates of a regular daily calorie intake. 

Day Of

1. Diet and calorie intake.  One of my favorite sayings is "the unhealthiest day of a runner is race and long run day."  Feed yourself about 30% of what your daily calorie intake will be for breakfast.  The objective is to get a healthy amount of carbs, some fat to slow the digestion to makeshift a slower carb.  Some protein in your breakfast is for amino acids for gluconeogenesis.  Protein also prevents the benign but consequential muscle catabolism caused by prolonged exercise.  Choose a breakfast similar to oatmeal with cocoa, a scoop of whey protein powder and a tablespoon of olive oil.  Other options are buckwheat pancakes, home fries with eggs or bacon or whole grain cereal with whole milk and a protein shake.  Along with breakfast, you should also caffeinate.
2. Caffeinate.  Drink coffee or some kind of hippie drink with a picture of nature or indigenous person on the label.  If you do not consume caffeine, consider a religion other than Mormonism.  Not only is caffeine good for being energy and triggering production for more of it, but it also has a laxative effect.  If you want to shed some excess weight, caffeine will trigger a nice, healthy bowel movement.  Voila, you are now two pounds lighter.  If you are a huge fiber fan, maybe even five pounds.  Caffeine also has a long half-life and will last you through the strenuous hours ahead.     
3. Prioritize.  Get that run out of the way as quickly as possible.  The longer you wait, the less likely it is to happen or the less time you will have to do it.  Unless you like running during the warmest part of the day, do it almost immediately after breakfast.  A nap can be taken afterwards so you can get re-energized for errands and/or chores.  What a great Sunday this is shaping up to be!  
4. Warm-up.  This should take 15 minutes at the very most.  Start with foam rolling then stretching your problematic areas.  Typically this would be calves, hips and IT Band.   Then warm up your gluteus with some bridges and controlled lunges.  Fire up the core with planks or any static ab exercises.  Repeat your exercises 3 times.  
5. Run.  Your first ten minutes will probably suck.  This is your body trying to figure out what the hell you are doing to it.  If you want more explanation, read the rest of this paragraph.  What your body is doing is switching from readily-available, anaerobic fuel sources.  This would encompass cellular inclusions with fatty acids, glucose and amino acids for fuel.  These are molecules that require little to no oxygen to turn into ATP.  Once you have burned through that fuel within the first 2 minutes, your body goes into panic mode, trying to make more ATP somehow. No matter how in shape you are or how long you have been running, you will always fall into this problem.  It gets better but never fully goes away.  But once the muscle starts understanding that it needs oxygen to catabolize macronutrients to make muscle fuel, you will ease into your long run and enjoy a natural flow.
6. Hydration.  This is the most important part of your run.  Obey the rule that "if you're thirsty you're already dehydrated."  So drink even if you are not thirsty.  A good approach to this is to already know how much water you lose from cardio training.  Weigh yourself after a workout to see how much you lose.  Then assume you run at a slightly less intense pace for your longer training periods.  This means you will drink a little less than what you lose from an hour of more intense cardio training.  
7. Dealing with soreness.  If you are adding to your mileage, you will feel the fire down under towards the end of the run.  Fortunately, there is a way to alleviate this.  Your blood may be pooling, unable to dispose of or neutralize metabolic wastes.  To circulate blood out of your legs, you will need bigger muscle contractions than those provided from a limited running motion.  By doing sets of 20 body weight squats (active stretching), you can get the lactate, creatnine, carbon dioxide and carbonic acid (HCO3) out of the lower extremities.  Your squats should be ass to grass and all the way back up.  The first 5 are just awful and may require holding on to something sturdy.  Do 20, walk for or jog for a minute and then do another set.  Repeat as many times as needed.  You may be surprised by how well this actually works.
8. Post-Run.  Once it is all over, get 20 grams of protein via liquid form and 80 grams of complex carbs.  I like sweet potatoes or two pieces of bread with two tablespoons of hummus.  Maltodextrin or meal replacement carbohydrates also work.  Some people even swear by milk for both the protein and carbohydrates.    
9. Washing your nasty ass.  An ice bath my or may not be necessary.  I have never had much luck with an ice bath reducing DOMS.  Others advocate ice baths.   
1. Do not take a hot shower.  Regardless of whether or not you do an ice bath, never take a hot shower, as it will only increase swelling to what are essentially damaged muscle fibers.    
2. Ice Bath.  If you opt for it then do it before a warm shower. Take a deep breath and just plunge right in.  Fill the bath tub halfway with cold water and then dump about 10 pounds of ice into it.  Think of it as a Polar Bear Run (Courtesy of those plucky Russians) minus the pleasant sauna beforehand.  Set the timer for 20 minutes and good luck.  
3. Epsom salt.  This is the best option and chronic pain patients think so, too.  It works through osmosis and is able to drain out swollen tissue and other metabolic wastes.  This is much more pleasant than the ice bath, arguably more effective and you do not need to empty all of your ice cube trays for it.  
10. Stretch.  These would be a repeat of all the problem areas you did before the run and an addition of all the primary running muscles: quads, hamstrings and butt.  Remember to always foam roll then stretch. Your muscles are still having a ton of neural input to contract (wave summation).  Stretching them would be like pulling a rubber band apart only to have it recoil.  To override the neural impulse to contract, you must override the golgi tendon and muscle spindle.  The only way this can be done is through a preliminary foam roll or massage.  If you are lucky enough to have a cabana boy on stand-by, let him give you the rubdown and whatever else.  It's not my cabana boy so use him however you want.  
11. Nutrition.  This is the day you can go a bit crazier.  You just did an extraordinary amount of cardio.  Feel free to tack on the extra calories.  Use this calculator to see how many more calories you can get away with.  You should skew the calories to 25% fat and protein with 50% carbohydrates.  Protein is for growth and repair.  Fat is essential for hormone production.  More anabolic hormones (e.g., testosterone, somatotropin) means you will have more reason for your body to use new protein to repair the damaged muscles.  And since you just worked out your legs, your body will also be more inclined to make these anabolic hormones.  The bigger the exercised muscle, the more growth hormone (GH) is made.  The more rigorous the exercise, the more hormones and proteins need to be synthesized.  You just did both, so feed your body fat and protein.
12. Rest.  Nap if you need it.  At the end of the day, definitely get more sleep than normal.  This is the only time of the day where GH is made.  Human growth hormone is pivotal in skeletal repair as well as fat catabolism, glucose release and muscle building.  The more sleep, the more GH made.  Like your androgens, the more rigorous the exercise and the larger the muscle, them more need for GH and its functions.  Sleep is also where your body is able to use vitamins and minerals from your diet to donate electrons to free radicals made during your heavy exercise.  There will be more on this in the next section. 

Day After

1. Supplement.  As mentioned, vitamins and minerals obtained from a balanced diet and supplementation will ward off toxic oxygen.  Though you probably eat a lot more than the regular person because of your social-life killing workout regimen, you do go through more vitamins and minerals.  Both are used for biosynthesis processes which you, as an endurance athlete, are operating on well beyond normal capacity.  Supplementing is a good safety against the potential damage from cell turnover and free radical production. The jury is still out on the efficacy of vitamins and minerals but a 5 cents a day is hardly a steep investment.  Hell, your celebratory jaeger bomb and/or coke addiction is many times more expensive.  The best part is you can easily grind up the vitamins and snort them with the rest of your paycheck.  If you're lucky, something has to be in that multivitamin that can enhance the effects of benzoylmethylecgonine.  And I am sure the extra iron will be good for adjusting to your daily nosebleeds. 
2. Diet.  Follow what you did yesterday with a higher emphasis on fats and proteins.  Be careful about a slightly more voracious appetite.  Your run was yesterday so you are only in a slightly heightened state of metabolism.  Your basal metabolic rate is almost back to normal.  Do not overeat and lose the fat loss benefits of your run.      
3. Exercise.  I recommend taking this day off.  Should you be mentally ill enough (me) to exercise the day after your long run, consider an upper body weight weight day or swimming. Some of those same body-weight squats you did during your run should also be included just to prevent blood clotting and increase waste removal.   Consider also going into therapy.  
4. Stretch and foam roll.  This may or may not speed up recovery and decrease DOMS.  It does guarantee better circulation, i.e. waste removal, and will just plain feel good.  

       There is a lot of explanation for these seemingly simple steps.  If you are like any typical runner, your head is thicker than the souls of your Brooks Beasts.  Explanations and science solidify the reasons these steps are necessary to ensuring that your run is something you dread but not avoid.