? about half training plans (Read 693 times)

The long run is important for a half no doubt, but you don't need to train the distance to race the distance. Same goes for a marathon. I don't think any beginner/intermediate runner needs to do more than 16-18 miles in training to do a marathon because working up to 20 miles or more beats you up too much as your training runs are 3-4 hours.

Beginner type runners who train up to 13 miles in training are basically doing "the race" before doing "the race".  The stress on the body is similar and too much of a strain and requires too much recovery. The goal is train and not beat the heck out of your body in training and get injured. I would rather an athlete get a lot of 7 - 10 mile runs in (including mid week) vs focused on doing 13 before a half. The cumulation of miles over weeks and months including mid week miles are what is most important to build your aerobic base, stamina and strength to race a half effectively and hold pace.

If you have a nice history of consistent running over several months and runnning 25 plus miles per week, you could do a half on 7 mile long runs. I have done it no problem years back when young an inexperienced. It beats you up more, but don't underestimate the power of the human body. I understand the lack of confidence but generally this comes with a lack of training. Do a few 10Ks and build some confidence and get more comfortable with your training and pacing. Racing pace is different than training pace. Good luck.

I've been scouring the Internet looking at and comparing different half training programs. (I've never done one before - 3 5Ks, and a 10K this coming weekend) and have a question.

 

Why do almost all the ones I look at have a longest "long" run of only 10 miles?  Why don't they go up to 13?

 

Thanks!

Generally for races of this distance and above, you dont need to do the full distance in training. The general training philosophy seems to be that in your longest run, you typically mimic the duration of the actual race but not the speed / pace. Alternatively, you may do a longish run with 60%-70% of the run at goal pace but never the full distance. You dont want to leave your race out in training. I remember a post from Nobby that quite clearly articulates why you never "race the race" in training.

Why you dont go the full distance is a good question - for one, it will take you longer to recover from that than a run which is 20-30 minutes shorter (depending on your pace), and two, there might not be that material a difference to your final race outcome whether your long run in training was 10 miles or 13 miles.

On race day, a combination of adrenalin, crowd effect and mental fortitude will let you sail over the finish line.

One issue with covering 13 miles in training is that it could be an excessively long workout for a beginner, well over 3 hours.  That is a LONG time if you are new to running.  Most experts recommend 3 hours or less.  There is a trade-off between running long enough time-wise to train the body for endurance (>2 hours), and running short enough to allow for recovery (<3 hours).  For your long run, it may be better for you to focus on time, rather than mileage.  If you are able to do 2 hour runs regularly in training, a half marathon will be well within your grasp.

Have a wonderful 10K next weekend, you are making great progress.

Why do you think it's important, or necessary, to do 13 miles?  Why 10 is not enough?

 

Because I am new to running and am trying to understand why 10 would be enough....

 

 

Beginner type runners who train up to 13 miles in training are basically doing "the race" before doing "the race".  The stress on the body is similar and too much of a strain and requires too much recovery. The goal is train and not beat the heck out of your body in training and get injured. I would rather an athlete get a lot of 7 - 10 mile runs in (including mid week) vs focused on doing 13 before a half. The cumulation of miles over weeks and months including mid week miles are what is most important to build your aerobic base, stamina and strength to race a half effectively and hold pace.

 

This makes a lot of sense.  Thank you!

My daughter has been in theatre throughout high school.  For theatre, they usually do the final dress rehearsal the day before; this is the time they actually go through the whole thing; lights and curtains and all that as well; to make sure everything works as planned.  So that's definitely one approach.  The other is to have a solid theory and put all the pieces together and, on the day, hope for the best.  The advantage of this approach is that it's not risky.  In other words, imagine you're sending a man to the moon.  You wouldn't think the dress rehearsal to that is to send a man to the moon!!  Of course, once you get the hang of it and it becomes a routine business, you may be able to afford it.  What I'm talking about is; some elite runners actually run a whole marathon distance several weeks before as a dress rehearsal and it works just fine.  But then again, they run 120-150 miles a week.  For most of us, the approach should be; work on stamina, work on speed, work on tempo-ish run...and put them all together ONLY on the race day.  These are people who may get hurt if they try to go the whole distance.  But this way, you'll know you can go far enough; you can run fast enough; you've put them together for some distance...you'll have a good educated guess that you can do it the whole way at the speed that you want to run.  And there are the 3rd kind--these are more or less a survivor group.  Their goal is simply go the distance.  Speed is secondary...  For those, and for the second group too in a way, if you want to put down the distance, I'd say the half is ENOUGH to get by.  In other words, if you're trying to run a marathon, if you can do 12-13 in training, you are probably okay to survive 26.  If you want to run a half, 6-7 would be enough to survive.  There's no research on this; this is just my hunch from experience.

Now if you want to actually "race" the distance, that's a bit different.  Now I'm here talking about doing the actual race faster than your long run pace.  If there's not much difference between those two, then you're a survival mode.  If you're actually training to race, then there's some physiological consideration that you'd have to bring on the table.  As Seilerts said, my take on this is between 2-3 hours.  Anything beyond 3-hours, then you'll get too much muscular damage and, this as Seilerts and some other guys also said, you'll be spending most of your rest of the week recovering.  This also has been mentioned but it's not so much of 10 mile or 6 mile or 12 miles; it's more of a time spent on your feet.  It's easy to any coach to say; "You go run 20-mile to get ready for your marathon!"  Of course if you can handle 20-miler, it's better.  It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.  But that would take me about 3:20 to run a 20-miler right now.  That would go beyond this 3-hour boundary.  People I have coached in the past; they have done much better if they'd done 16-18 range for a marathon.  One guy ran as little as 12-miles and he had a 40-minutes PR.  Again, you really can't simply half the distance and say; well if I ran 6-miles, I may be able to have 20-minutes PR in the half...  It just won't work out that way.  But I can assure you that 10 COULD BE more than plenty.  Of course when you do that 10 is another factor in the equation.  As I took a glance at your log, you seem to have been increasing your long run steadily.  As I always say, training for a marathon, or any other race for that matter, is not like a history exam.  You can't keep increasing, increasing, increasing right up to the race.  That's the theory of Midas who kept lifting a baby calf until it becomes a full-grown bull.  Can you still lift it up?  Well...!  There's a factor of "Tapering".  In other words, it's not a very smart approach to add one mile to your long run each week right up to your 13-mile race (with 12 the week before).  Like I said, from my experience, if you can do the half the distance, a few weeks before the half, you can survive it.  If you want to "race" the half, you want to bring it up to around 2-hours, WHATEVER THE DISTANCE IT MAY BE, and keep that for a few weeks.  In other words, it wouldn't really matter whether you run 6 miles or 8 miles or 10 in 2 hours, do that every weekend, or every other weekend, for a few times.  THAT is how you build the base.  And THAT is what allows you to go the distance.

Physiologically, there's all this oxygen carrying mechanisms that would be stimulated and developed in the body anywhere between 1:30 to 2:00 and beyond.  Too much beyond that and it'll damage your muscles and tendons and reduce the recovery time.

So is 10-mile enough for a half marathon?  It really depends; it depends on how you want to approach that race, what sort of fitness level you are at right now, and how many miles you can actually cover between 1:30-2:00 range.  It would not be enough for some; it would be just right for some; it may even be too much for some.  In the case of the latter, trying to "race" a half marathon may even be too much at this point.

 

Because I am new to running and am trying to understand why 10 would be enough....

Great thread.