i’m planning on doing my first half marathon this year, the syracuse half marathon!
the race is on march 23, so that’s 10-11 weeks from now. that’s plenty of time for a good training block. my A goal is to finish in 1:45, my B goal is to finish in 1:50, and C goal is to finish under two hours (this is all based on my current threshold pace for 5k which i think is around 7:45 – 8:15 mpm) and keep it conservative. training wise i’m adapting the novice marathon program in hal higdons Marathon Guide book for a half marathon. a couple of interesting parts of his training program is the long run mile step back every 3rd week and gradual increase of the mid week mileage. the purpose of the step back is to support recovery after a couple of consecutive mile increases before building back higher
unlike his program for the novice training instead of doing saturday long run i’m doing a sunday one followed by a recovery run. he also packs all three non-long runs together consecutively but i like having space between those runs for cross training / strength training or just rest – so i adjusted that too.
overall i’m optimistic about this program because it’s not too far off from my current weekly mileage and i’m coming off of a short break from running due to the weather lately, so i should adapt well to this but who knows. since i am going to be targeting a specific pace i know i need to throw some speed work and threshold runs in there so the breaks between runs mid week should help
here’s my full schedule (thanks claude ai for formatting my original csv into a table)
| Week | Run 1 | Run 2 | Run 3 | Long Run | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 15 |
| 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 16 |
| 3 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 17 |
| 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 15 |
| 5 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 19 |
| 6 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 10 | 21 |
| 7 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 18 |
| 8 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 12 | 24 |
| 9 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 10 | 22 |
| 10 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 8 | 20 |
for race pace and finish times i like to use this chart.