The half-marathon is trickier than it sounds. Regardless of its identify suggesting it’s simple and simply half a marathon, mastering the space can take expertise and extra pace coaching than anticipated. One widespread mistake some runners make is coaching for a half-marathon the identical manner they might for a marathon: hammering mileage. To really race a sooner half, it’s important to inject a number of pace periods into your coaching. And even including a single pace session every week—much like what you’d do in case you had been coaching for a quick 5K or 10K—might help convey that essential leg turnover again.
For this session, utilizing an area 400m or 500m observe or loop is good, because the purpose is to lock in a tempo between your goal 10K and half-marathon tempo throughout brief, quick intervals with minimal restoration.
The exercise
two units of 10 reps of 300m @ purpose half marathon tempo or sooner with 100m jog relaxation and three minutes (stand) relaxation between the 2 units
This exercise totals about 8K of pace work, making it a strong race-prep session. If you happen to can hit your purpose paces all through, it’ll be an enormous confidence increase heading towards race day. The important thing to getting longer exercises like this performed is by progressing into them: begin at round, or simply slower than, your purpose tempo, and attempt to choose up the tempo by 5 seconds each fifth rep, saving your quickest laps for the ultimate 5 reps.
The aim of brief relaxation intervals is to maintain your coronary heart fee excessive, forcing your cardiovascular system to work more durable, which may enhance your coronary heart and lung capability over time. This added endurance helps you preserve sooner paces for longer races or runs, reminiscent of a half-marathon.
If you happen to don’t have an area observe or loop to do that exercise on, an interval modification of this exercise is 2 units of 10 reps of 80 seconds with 30 seconds gradual jog relaxation between (and three minutes relaxation between units).