Half marathon training plan: under 2 hours

A sub-2 half marathon means 5:41 per kilometre, every kilometre. That number decides most of what follows: how the sessions look, how you run the race, and whether the goal belongs to this autumn or the next one.

Is two hours realistic for you right now?

Look at your 10K. If you can run it in around 54 minutes, which is 5:24 per kilometre, sub-2 is within reach over twelve weeks. Half marathon pace is slower than 10K pace, and that is the whole point. You are not trying to run faster than you do today, you are trying to hold a slightly easier pace for much longer.

If your 10K sits at 57 or 58 minutes it can still be done, but twelve weeks is tight. Give it sixteen, or aim for 2:05 now and sub-2 at the next race. If you have never run 10 kilometres without stopping, start there instead.

The week

Four runs a week, between 35 and 45 kilometres. Three of them have a job to do, the fourth exists so your legs get used to running often.

The long run grows from 12 kilometres to 18 or 20. Run it easy, around 6:30 to 6:50 per kilometre, clearly slower than race pace. Pushing the long run is the most common reason the quality sessions fall apart later in the week.

The threshold session is the hardest one. Two lots of ten minutes to begin with, growing to 25 minutes unbroken, at roughly 5:15 to 5:25 per kilometre. It should feel hard but controlled, about the pace you could hold for an hour if you had to.

The race pace session does the most for this particular goal. You run at 5:41, the exact pace the race demands, in blocks that grow. Three lots of three kilometres early on, then two lots of six, and eventually twelve kilometres unbroken. The point is not fitness. It is that the pace should feel familiar in your legs on race day instead of something you have to calculate.

The fourth run is easy, 45 minutes, and has no ambitions whatsoever.

The twelve weeks

The first four weeks are about making the structure fit your actual life. The long run goes from 12 to 15 kilometres and the threshold sessions stay short.

Weeks five to eight are where race pace arrives properly. The long run sits at 16 to 18 kilometres and you run your first real blocks at 5:41.

Weeks nine and ten are the heaviest. The longest run, 18 to 20 kilometres, and the last one finishes with 8 kilometres at race pace on tired legs. Get through that session and you will get through the race.

The final two weeks cut volume by roughly 40 per cent while keeping short blocks of race pace so your legs do not go to sleep. The taper always feels like too little. It is supposed to.

Race day

5:41 is an average, not a pace you hit on every kilometre. Hills, water stations and a crowded start take seconds you never get back. Plan for 5:36 instead, which puts 1:58 on paper and leaves you a margin when something goes wrong.

The classic mistake is running the first 5K at 5:20 to bank time. Banked time does not exist in running. That first 5K should feel almost too easy, and if it does, you have got it right.

Where the plan runs out

All of the above fits in a calendar. Then the kids get ill in week six, work eats week nine, and a cold takes three sessions out of week ten. The plan is not wrong because that happened. It was written as though it would not.

That is when the hard question shows up. Do you skip the missed long run or move it? Do you run the threshold session as planned after a week of four hours of sleep a night? A static schedule has no answer, because it does not know what happened to you.

Coach Fartlek is our own app, so expect bias. It builds the plan towards your half marathon, reads every run from your watch, and rewrites the coming weeks when a session was missed or your recovery looks poor. It is the same problem we wrote about in a running app that adapts to recovery, and it applies just as much when you only get three runs a week.

The app needs a watch connected through Intervals.icu, covers 5K to marathon, and does nothing else. Pricing is on the pricing page, and the trial is free.

Twelve weeks is plenty for sub-2 if the 10K is there. Guard the easy pace on your long runs and trust 5:41.