Half marathon training plan: The best preparation guide – Red Bull

Half-marathons are a great distance to tackle. Whether you’re doing it for the first time or not, they offer a big challenge and will push you out of your comfort zone. They also have the added bonus of being less time-consuming to train for than a full marathon, which can become quite disruptive to your daily routine.

How ever fast or slow you’re aiming to run, you’ll need to set aside around 10 weeks for training and include a range of sessions each week.

Click here to access two 10-week training plans – one for beginners and one for more experienced runners looking to improve their half-marathon time. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the terms or sessions prescribed, fear not. Here’s the key sessions explained, plus some handy advice to ensure those 10 weeks run smoothly…

Long runs

The most important run in your week will be your long run. These will get longer over the weeks and peak a couple of weeks before race day. Each week your long run will build your endurance, both in terms of your fitness and preparing your body to withstand 13.1 miles of running.

Your long runs should be run at a comfortable pace, slower than the pace you intend to run your half-marathon. Any quicker than this and you’ll burn yourself out and won’t reap the full benefits of the runs.

As well as improving your endurance, you’ll build your confidence. This is particularly important if you’re tackling a half-marathon for the first time. Each week you’ll look at your long run distance and question whether you can run that far, and every time you tick the run off you’ll feel more confident about completing the full 13.1 miles.

General aerobic

These are moderately-paced runs that add volume to your training and enhance your aerobic fitness. They’re likely to be your most enjoyable run of the week, too, as you’re not going deliberately slow or uncomfortably fast. They’re a good run to do with friends at a chatty pace.

Speed intervals

The final miles of your half-marathon are going to feel hard, and you’ll have to dig deep to get through them. Your interval training sessions will ask you to do just that: get uncomfortable and keep going. As well as boosting your speed and fitness, the mental strength they help build is going to help you in miles 12 and 13 of your race.

A speed session is made up of a warm-up, then intervals of hard sprints (efforts) and easy running (recoveries), and finally a cool down jog. You’ll have at least one mile of easy running to do as a warm-up and then you’ll be asked to run a set distance, followed by a period of jogging or easy running, to recover. How many times you do this is the number of ‘reps’.

Tempo runs

Tempo runs are very simply sessions at a set pace for a given period. For a half-marathon, they are often done at goal race pace. In order to hold your goal pace in a race, you need to practise running at it in training. These runs work in several ways. First off, you don’t want to have to rely on your GPS watch to tell you what pace you’re running because you’ll be looking at it the whole time, and they’re not 100 percent reliable. Secondly, if you can get a sense of when you’re running at race pace, and know how it should feel, you’ll be able to stick to a more even pace come race day.

Knowing that you’ve been able to hold your goal pace in training – even though it will be for a shorter distance than your race – can help build your confidence, too.

These runs will begin with an easy mile to help you warm up, followed by your goal pace miles, and then finish with another easy mile to help you cool down.

Threshold runs

These are a form of tempo run, but concentrate specifically on your threshold pace to improve your speed over longer distances.

Your lactate threshold is the point at which lactic acid is produced in the muscles faster than it’s able to be used for fuel and therefore begins to build up, causing you to slow down. You would need a treadmill hooked up to some serious lab equipment and blood tests to determine your true lactate threshold.

For experienced runners, it’s somewhere between 10km and half-marathon pace. Adding 10-15 seconds per mile to your (current) 10km pace, or 20-30 seconds per mile to your 5km pace will be close enough. If your 10km pace is around 60 minutes, run these at your 10km pace.

Recovery runs

When running at a truly easy pace, recovery runs can help your body recover from harder sessions while still adding volume to your week. How easy are we talking? As much as two minutes per mile slower than goal pace for speedier runners (though many of the pros will go even slower than this). You’re looking for around 75 percent of your max heart rate. But remember, recovery runs don’t mean you can get out of taking rest days.

Strength training

Adding some strength training to your week can have some serious benefits. More powerful muscles can produce a more powerful stride, and a strong, stable foundation of core muscles can help you harness that power effectively. A strong core will also help you maintain your running form in the final stages of the race when you get tired.

Make sure you include some unilateral exercises into your routine (those where you work the two sides of your body separately). These will more closely replicate the motion of running, where your legs are working at different times, and will challenge your balance. Lunges and single-leg deadlifts are perfect.

Nutrition

When it comes to running, your nutrition covers before, during and after your run. Before your run, carbohydrates are the main focus so you can fuel your session. After, you’ll need to take on some protein to help your muscles repair and get stronger, as well as more carbohydrates to replenish the supply you’ve been using.

You’ll only really need to think about taking on fuel (carbohydrates) during your longer training runs. These are an opportunity to work out what works best for you. Some runners prefer to use sports nutrition, such as energy drinks or gels, which are a convenient way to get some much-needed energy on board. Others prefer ‘real food’ in the shape of bananas, dried fruit or chocolate bars. What works for one runner won’t for another, so experiment and then stick to what you know on race day.

Rest days

Rest days are an important part of your training plan and you should take them as seriously as your long runs. Training works through overloading your body (not too much) and by doing slightly more than you’re comfortable with, and then allowing it to rebuild and get stronger.

If you don’t give your body enough time to recover and rebuild, you’re not going to get the full benefits of the effort you’ve put into training, and worse, you’re going to risk overtraining and injury. Essentially, less can be more, so never neglect those race days!