Getting Ready for a Spring Half Marathon

I'm already registered for a spring Half Marathon and want to give my readers a great running plan in case any of you are planning to run one in the next months. The plan I'll lay out will cover a 12 week period. This plan is tied to Heart Rate Running, so if you need a refresher on how to determine your heart rate percentages, please read over my earlier articles.

This is a very simple plan. Each Sunday, starting tomorrow, I will give you that week's plan. The week I'm setting is from Sunday through Saturday. This doesn't have to be those days, you can adjust accordingly, but follow the basic tenets of the plan if you want to use it successfully.

There are five running days a week. Saturday is the long run. Wednesday is reserved for either a Tempo Run or Speed Workout. You will note that about every 3rd or 4th week, I back off of mileage for the week as well as each day's mileage. That is to help you recover for the training stresses that your body will be going through.

Before I send out next week's plan tomorrow, I ask that you find the following heart rate ranges for all three workouts - Easy/everyday and Long Runs (less than 70% HRM), Tempo (80-88% of HRM) and Speed ( 90-100% HRM). Remember, the HRM (Heart Rate Max) is the following formula = (Max Heart Rate - Resting Heart Rate (difference) x percent + Resting Heart Rate.

Just a quick example to help you. My heart rate max is 185 beats per minute. My resting heart rate is 55. So the difference is 130 beats per minute. So my everyday rate would be 146, determined by 130 x 70% = 91 plus 55 = 146. For Tempo, it ends up being between 159-169 and Speed 172-185.

This means that I won't let my heart rate go over 146 in my easy runs and most of my long run (there is something that I add to the long run different than what you see in other plans but I will share that with you later).

This plan can be used by essentially everyone, beginner, veteran or expert. I can't guarantee your fastest PR (Personal Record) race(no one can), but you will run it at your best potential if you follow this plan. I've used it to run a 2:00 marathon last year when my best Half Marathon to date was a 2:08. So I'm not promising to take 30 minutes off your last Half Marathon, but it could take almost 7% off your last Half Marathon time.

Look for the first week's running plan tomorrow.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad