My Half Marathon Training Strategy – A Simplified Version

I will be running in Run for Water Half Marathon on May 27, 2012, which is my first race of any kind in just over two years.  Since I was struck down with plantar fasciitis for almost a full year, and had to take a lot of that time off of running altogether, it really limited any running goals that I had.

Even when I got back to running after I felt that the plantar fasciitis was gone, I was ultra-careful as the last thing I wanted was for it to return again.  Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve been running injury-free for over six months now, so I decided I can finally put some running goals in place.

Friends, who were also running in this event, encouraged me to sign up for the Run for Water.  It has many different distances to choose from, so I went for the 1/2 Marathon.  It was a bit aggressive given my timeframe, but I thought that it would kick start me back into running distances, since I also signed up for the Bellingham Bay Marathon (my main goal) at the end of September.  Many people ask:

How do I get from 10K to half marathon distances?

I’ve followed a variety of training plans throughout, but typically go back a simple method that I use, which is:

1. 2 weeks before the race I want to run my longest distance, as I need to taper and make sure that I am well rested for the race.
2. In the case of a half marathon, I like to make sure that I am capable of running the full distance (13.1 miles or 21 K) in my training.
3. From there, I break it down.  What works for me is to add 15 – 20 minutes every second week.  So if my longest runs have been an hour and I figure that the half marathon is going to take me two hours to complete, I know that my next run needs to be an 1:15, two weeks later, I run 1:30, two weeks later – 1:45 and then finally two weeks before the race a 2 hour run.

I realize that this is very simplified, but this is my strategy for increasing my mileage.  And if I’m starting from a base position of one hour runs, I can work it back and know that it’ll take me 8 weeks to get ready for the half marathon.   Confusing?  If so, just leave a comment and I’ll try to be a bit more specific.

The reason I use time instead of distance is because I wasn’t always running with my Garmin 305 and since I run off-road and on-road, even with Google Maps, it’s sometimes impossible to add up my mileage, so I just use time.  Now that I have my Garmin, it’s nice to know the distances, but I still go on time for increasing my distances.

What do I do in between my long runs?

•    During the week, I do my regular runs.
•    If I have an extremely tired day, I take it off, without beating myself up.
•    The week in between my long runs, I try to do some speed work.

I live in an area that has hills wherever I run, so I don’t worry about getting any hill training in.  But, if you don’t have hills, then I also believe that it’s important to get some hill training in as well – especially if your running event will have hills.

This is typically the schedule I follow (works well for the full marathon too).  However, this time I have had to fast track it as I only had just over five weeks to get ready for this half marathon.  During my first 14K run, I managed to pull a calf muscle which isn’t healing very quickly and, since I’m increasing my distances, I’m also not giving it the necessary time to heal.  I now have three weeks left until race day and just ran 18K yesterday, so I know that I can do it – one more long run left!

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