My First Half Marathon Training Plan!
Hey everyone 🙂
I’ve finally put together what I think will be a solid training plan for my first half marathon coming up in June!
The training plan is a bit unusual because my friend Ashley and I just did the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler two weeks ago, so we won’t be starting from scratch… more just continuing what we were doing and slightly increasing mileage!
So if you are starting from scratch, please don’t follow this plan — you should build up much more slowly!
Here’s the plan by month (I shaded out the days up until tomorrow):
In many ways, this training plan is very similar to our 10 miler training plan:
- We are still only going to run 3 days a week — this just works best for me in terms of avoiding overuse injuries. We’ll have one long run, one hilly run, and one speed work run, which will usually be done on the treadmill (or a track) alternating sprints and jogging.
- We’ll still be doing strength and cross training on our days off, including yoga.
- We still have one scheduled rest day a week.
The main differences between this plan and our 10 miler training plan are:
- On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I’ll be doing kickboxing with LA Boxing instead of cross/strength training on my own, which usually consisted of 30 to 40 minutes on the elliptical and various strength moves with free weights or weight machines. If I feel like this is too much and I need another rest or yoga day (especially the day after some of those long runs), I’ll take it!
- I have all our long runs in the plan on Sundays, but that’s not set in stone. Do you rest the day before or after a long run? I’ve been experimenting with which I like better.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish out this training and half marathon without any knee trouble. Training for the Cherry Blossom went really well, but as you’ll remember I had some knee trouble while training for the Army Ten Miler in the fall.
I think the biggest things that helped me stay (knock on wood) injury free so far this spring are:
- More strength training — my legs are much stronger than they were in the fall, as I spent a lot of time this winter strengthening them before I began training again.
- Icing after EVERY. SINGLE. RUN. — no matter how short!
- Foam rolling. Feels so good on sore legs!
Have you ever been injured from running? How did you deal with it? Are you able to run pain free now?
And — what do you think of the training plan? Any comments/suggestions?