During a week half marathon training cycle, you need to plan on setting aside about 5. It naturally takes longer to walk 4 miles then it does to run 4 miles. The one big advantage of walking over running is that it takes much less effort to walk 4 miles versus running 4 miles. Related: Half Marathon racecourse etiquette — 15 things You Should never do!
Most major races, and even smaller races, will have some type of information or registration website that post-race cut-off times. If cutoff times are listed on the website then you need to assume that these are strict cut-off times and you need to pace accordingly.
If you would like to read more information about half marathon and marathon closing times check out this post: How long do marathons stay open for runners? Also, check out the proper running form if you plan on mixing walking with running at all during your race. When you are walking briskly, you need to practice your breathing patterns.
Here is a quick breathing guide when your walking pace picks up:. Below are 8 pacing interval tables. Each combination of intervals and pacing will get you to the half marathon finish line in under four hours if you follow it appropriately. Green being the easiest and red being the most difficult for walkers.
Best Half Marathon Training Watches. If 4 minutes of brisk walking is too much then switch to a 5-minute interval cycle. This allows for a less intense interval of brisk walking from 4 minutes to 2 minutes , however, you get less casual walking time from 6 minutes to 3 minutes.
Yes, you can change up the intervals however you like. Here are some other examples that you might want to try:. Yes, you can use distance instead of time for the interval variable. Here are some examples of using distance instead of time as the interval variable:.
I like to keep things as simple as possible. In order to walk a half marathon in 3. Walking a 3. There are several forms of speed work that you can use to help make you a faster walker. You can experiment with the numbers.
This is to take the focus off of how many miles you are going and help you to build endurance in regards to time. If you want, then of course you will be able to estimate how far you walk based off of how many miles you can walk per hour.
The 3 other scheduled walks for the week work on building your mileage and helping your body adjust to walking farther and farther. Cross Training scheduled as XT on the training schedule is incorporated into the program to help work the muscles that are ignored when walking.
Your cross training should involve other low impact aerobic activities such as swimming, cycling, skiing, etc. It includes a mix of aerobic and strength training workouts. Your pace during your weekly walks should be easy. You should be able to hold a conversation with a friend. As a beginner you don't want to push hard through every training walk that you do as that can set you up for injury especially an overuse injury such as shin splints.
Therefore do 2 of your walks during the week at an easy pace, and one at a slightly harder power-walking pace. As you begin to feel more and more comfortable with walking and pushing the paces then if you choose, you can gradually make all of your walks power walking sessions.
Your long walk of the week on the weekends should also be at a comfortable pace. The idea of this walk is to build up your endurance and mimic race day situations so use them as a mock test. That being said, it also could be used by a runner who wants to run all the scheduled training runs! This training plan is made for you to be flexible with and is not something that needs to be accomplished within a certain time span.
This Challenge is for walkers or runners you get access to 3 different training plans one specifically for walkers and focuses on weight loss through the half marathon training plan, strength training, and your nutrition! How to run a half marathon: a step by step guide. Do whatever you can to have a good time. That may mean a social run with a lot of friends. It could mean a trail run, it could mean an exciting option.
Of course, it doesn't matter what it is, right? The whole point of this is you do what makes you feel fantastic. So the second step for the process today is to actually go out today and move your body with wherever you are. Step three, then is to create an achievable weekly goal. So once you have the foundation laid to acknowledge where you are, and you've moved your body and have the data around that to know how you feel, and where you actually have a good understanding of your actual level of fitness this point, you now have an actual weekly schedule that aligns to where you think you can go from here.
Now, there are a lot of running plans that exists on the internet, lots of books about this stuff. There are a lot of opportunities here to kind of mix and match the way that you want to train. I'm not going to tell you where to begin necessarily, besides do some research, right, find a good book, find a good mentor, find a running coach, find a friend to run with. That's the case where you want to make sure that the plan that you stick with is one that fits your schedule, and one that is achievable for where you are today.
The average person trained for a half marathon can easily do so in three to six months. Six months is probably the the longer end of that, where if you give yourself a full six months, you will probably be able to get there in a way that is healthy. If you're trying to pull off a half marathon and the next two weeks and you have never run before in your life, don't do it.
Please, please, please don't do that. I'm gonna say from experience here, I get emails literally every month from New runners to ask the exact same question.
And here it is, Jeff. I just saw a half marathon that's in my nearby town coming up in a few weeks. I'm not a runner.
Can I pull that off? Is that gonna work? No, don't do that. Please, God, run and train and take care of yourself. Because if you don't do that, if you do not train, well, if you show up with two weeks of experience and think you're somehow going to pull it off, you're going to get injured, you're going to hate the process.
It's not going to work. Now maybe you pull it off. Maybe you do cross the finish line, but it's gonna hurt.
It's not gonna be enjoyable. So what was the point? If you're not going to be able to do it? Well, honestly, it's the risks are too high.
And I'll say this, that same note, this is a few years ago, I ran the Nashville half marathon, the National half marathon run every year at the end of April is a very hot run, because it's right when spring begins to turn to summer, and the temperature skyrockets at the end of the month.
And I hate the timing of this run so much, because it really could be run literally two weeks earlier, it would be a lot better weather.
But either way, what happens is the temperature gets a lot higher very quickly. And so all of these people who have been training for probably two weeks, show up to the race, not prepared. They're not prepared for the weather, not prepared for the heat, not prepared to run that distance.
And so what happened a few years ago, I ran this race, we got to about mile So you're only three miles away from the finish line.
You're pretty close to the end, and I started seeing paramedic And ambulances and volunteers in the crowd running into the race. Because people around me were dropping like flies literally passing out all over the place. It was an amazing moment because I, at the time had been running quite a bit. And so my body was already acclimated to the idea of doing a long distance run. And I felt pretty healthy. I was really surprised at how many runners literally had no ability to finish the race, because they hadn't prepared.
Now, yes, some people have health conditions. I'm not going to negate that. But the reality is, I guarantee you the majority, those runners were not prepared. So if your plan is to finish a half marathon and finish it well, and be a strong runner and be a strong runner for life, take care of yourself trained properly, take your time and do it well.
Because you don't want to be that guy or gal that falls down in the race because you literally passed out because you couldn't handle it. Now on that same note, I'll tell a personal story of that actually affected me in a bad way. I was running a full marathon. About a year after that half marathon, which is the flying monkey marathon here in Nashville, which is an amazing race, super challenging.
And I was at mile So literally two miles from the very end of the marathon, and my legs cramped up, and I literally couldn't walk. I was just standing there in the middle of the race, just like trying to hobble because I had run out of electrolytes, and my muscles had literally just cramped up. And a woman ran by me and literally threw a salt packet at me, like she saw me and just chucked it.
And she was not another runner in the race. But she saw that I was struggling. She knew exactly what was going on. And I grabbed the salt packet, I shoved it down and literally a minute later, my legs can move again and off I went.
Sometimes that's what happens, right. Sometimes you're underprepared. Sometimes things happen. So the key here is experience. The key here is to know your body to know what you need when you need it, and to take care of yourself. So for step three, you create that achievable weekly goal by doing your research Getting the experience and taking care of yourself. Now speaking of training plans, step four is to take the advice of someone that I took the advice from years ago, who I think may be the best place to start.
So step four is to read a book called half marathon. You can do it by Jeff Galloway. Jeff Galloway has been around for many years, he's trained a lot of runners, his books are very popular, you'll see quite a few of them on Amazon. But the book half marathon you can do it is based on his very traditional and very effective run walk method, which means you're going to be running with lots of intentional walk breaks. There's a variety of ways you can approach that. So let his book take care of the details there.
But the point of it being that you're not actually setting out to run the entire distance, your actual plan is to finish the distance. So you'll be taking quite a few walk breaks if you do it well. And especially as a beginner walk breaks are awesome. I take them all the time in almost every single run that I go on because you need the brake. You Your body can readjust, you get a chance to refuel, and then begin again feeling more refreshed.
So definitely pick up his book, I'll have a link to that in the show notes page this week, which is Jeff sanders. Step number five is that variety is going to be essential in this process. So if your goal is to run this half marathon and do it well and not get injured, you're going to have to have some sort of a process in place to make sure you're not just running.
So one of the keys to making sure that you stay healthy as a runner is to cross train and strength train, which for most people generally means going to the gym about twice a week to make sure you're lifting weights, to strengthen those key areas of your body that really do kind of drive the run, so to speak. So in the sense of a runner, the average things you're gonna want to do is make sure you have a really strong core, strong back, strong legs.
Those are the things are going to drive you forward in most cases. So if you can, essentially focus on those areas when you work out. There's a lot of workout plans online for those That will give you a stronger fall form as you run is one of the keys to long distance running like a half marathon marathon, an ultra marathon is going to be conserving energy. And one of the best ways to conserve energy over the long haul is having a body that is designed to run for a longer distance, which means a body that is flexible, and and, and lean and strong in the right areas.
And if you ignore one of those key areas, if you're not lean, if you're not strong, if you're not conserving energy, well, it just makes the process much harder. And so the goal long term is to ensure you have those core things built in so that the run is easier so you can finish the race faster and feel better while doing it. And so if you don't approach the run holistically, initially you'll probably be fine.
But down the road, that's when injuries will kick in. That's when you'll realize you're going to hit a wall so to speak in the sense of you're not really growing or gaining what you want. So off hamster runners is that if you Just focus on running long term, you're going to get to a point where you're not really improving your times are about the same, they always have been. And if you want to get better with time, there's going to have to be some sort of a plan in place to make you the best possible you as a runner.
I guess I can pause here and note that I'm not actually a personal trainer or health coach. So this advice is just my opinion. But as you dig into this process, you will see this kind of advice mentioned frequently, that the strength training aspect is going to be a very core core component of the training program. Obviously, the running is most important, but you cannot negate the other components as well. Step number six is more of the the mental game.
So this is going to be for most people the hardest part by far, because as I mentioned before, if you don't train very well, but you still don't try and pull off the run. There's a reason why that's possible.
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