Don't Run a Half Marathon to Run A Half Marathon
Feeling overwhelmed about not having enough time to run a half marathon before your half marathon?
In this article:
Don’t worry! You don’t have to run a half marathon to train for a half marathon!
And actually I say running a half marathon in your training is a hard pass… like don’t do it. Just don’t.
You don’t need and actually shouldn’t run too much when training for a half marathon.
Your body needs some rest to not over do it in preparation for your race.
What distance should you run for long run half marathon
So what distance should you run instead and why?
A half marathon is 13.1 miles and you should run 10 miles as your longest run and it’ll be plenty to get you prepped for your big race.
You only need to run 10 miles because when you train right you’ll still be on your feet for the same amount of time.
It’s not about the mileage, it’s about the amount of time on your feet. When you’re training your long runs should be much slower than race pace.
How fast should you run your long runs?
When training for races your long run needs to be slower than how fast you run your race.
They should be 20-30% slower than your race pace.
10 Mile Long Run Pace
So let’s look at that 10 mile long training run… 10 miles is about 30% shorter than the half marathon. And if you’re running it 30% slower… that means you’ll be running for the same amount of time that you’d run the half marathon. So there’s no need to run 13.1 miles in training.
Want an example?
Your race pace is 10 minute/mile.
30% slower pace is 13 minute/mile.
Race day total time: 10minute/mile * 13.1 miles = 131 minutes (2 hours 11 minutes)
Long run 10 miler total time: 13minute/mile *10 miles = 130 minutes (2 hours 10 minutes)
See? You’d be running for the same amount of time.
So don’t fret if you don’t have the time to run a half marathon before your half marathon… you shouldn’t be running that far for that race.
Can you run too much?
When training for a half marathon you may think you should run as much as you can to prep for race day.
The problem is you can run too much.
And when you run too much you overtrain and get injured.
This is the top reason to not run a half marathon during training for a half marathon. You end up overtraining and get injured. Then you risk having to sit out on race day or worse take a significant amount of time longer to recover and heal.
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