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Half Marathon Training

Hi everyone,

I signed up for a half marathon at the end of February and I'm planning to modify the outseason plan a little in preparation for the race.  I was just curious what people's thoughts were on what percentage of your weekly milage you long run for the week should be.   Does everyone agree that your weekly long run should not account for more than 50% of your weekly running volume?  I'm intending on sticking to the off season plan for the most part, but need to add in a long run.  For the most part, I suspect my long will not account for more than 50%, but I'm interested to see what other things think about this.

Any advice/recommendations would be appreciated.

Comments

  • Colin- check the Wiki for the Half Marathon Hack to the OS. It lays out exactly how much to add and when to add it to your schedule to get you ready for a Half Mary during the OS.
  •  I guess we'd have to know how many miles/wk you are doing now.  From what I remember from Dr. Jack Daniels, is about 20-25% of your total weekly mileage or no more than 90 minutes, something like that but that's only if you're on a pure running schedule.  But, that might seem too small to you if you are running 3x's a week for a total of 20 miles.  You're in the OS so I assume you are doing a couple track workouts and some bricks.... so let's say you do a total of 5 miles for your track workout (WU, CD included with rest int.) and 2-3 miles of brick runs per brick, we're looking at what, 16 miles total?  So if you use Jack's parameters, you're only looking at 3-4 miles for your long run!!!  Tough one there, I'd kill for that.  So 50% doesn't sound that awful.  But, I'm sure you understand the stress you're body is under in the OS that's why the mileage isn't up.  I guess I've wasted a lot of characters here as it looks like you'll want to search the Wiki as Nemo suggested because you'll have break routine from the OS for at least 2-3 weeks to get a little more running volume in to build up to a longer long run.  Or, you can roll the dice and stay with the OS and go for it on race day!!!  But, if you're planning on not straying too far off from the OS schedule, I would make a build up to a long run of at least 1/2 to 3/4 of the race distance just for mental preparation.  You don't want to be doing your OS and then go balls out in a race of that distance and hope for your best time and not get injured, that's going to be a fine line, and if you're going to get injured it will be from running and it will kill a couple of weeks of your OS recovering.  I would be prudent in that I wouldn't expect a PR unless you've been training for it, not to over do the miles if you're staying with the OS, and make sure your long runs are at an easy pace and that you know you can easily handle half the distance and don't go into the race already throttled to avoid injury.  Good luck man!

    Dan

  • Awesome! Sorry I didn't find that myself, but thanks for the help. Happy holidays!
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