In March 2023 I ran the Cambridge Half Marathon. It was my first half marathon. I wanted to do something worthwhile and that was bigger than myself. I raised almost £1000 for Mind in the process, and also improved my mental health by having a non-work goal to strive for.
I’m still firmly middle-to-back of the pack when it comes to racing, but I did beat my own goal by achieving a time of 1 hour, 47 minutes, and 48 seconds (my target was to beat 1:55:00).
Afterwards, a friend, who turned out to do relatively even better in their respective race, asked for some tips and how I prepared. Since I’d already written this up for them, I figured I’d post it as a blog post. There’s obviously a lot of guides and how-tos for this, although I’d say only a few are written from the perspective of someone new to sport, so hopefully this gives a slightly different perspective.
The regime
My starting point was being reasonably used to running, including some distance – I’d done 21k before but it took over 2h – and had eight weeks available for specific training. I ran 3-4 runs per week, ramping up from 25km per week up to 45km per week near the end. Here’s some of the principles/ideas I followed for my training plan and preparation:
Include lots of low intensity distance: A lot of coaches advocate for doing a significant amount of training at lower intensities. You can search for MAF training, 80/20 training or various others. I’m not sure this directly translates from pros to amateurs (especially the 80% bit), but I followed the general principle and did a lot of distance at low heart rate (around 140-145bpm for me). This helps to get the training volume/distance in and the aerobic fitness benefits without risking injury or causing excess fatigue that stops/slows down later training. I definitely saw the paces I achieved at these heart rates improve over the training block.
Include pace/workout variety: Along with the above, it seems widely accepted that doing a variety of paces during training is recommended. My training included:
- Slow runs (targeting low HR, 140-145 bpm – maybe just under 6:00/km for me). These started around 6.5km up to 19km for the weekend run.
- Interval sessions: maybe the best one but it was very taxing was 6x800m progressing from 4:50 down to 4:20/km – or a bit slower than your best 5k to a bit faster with 800m slow jogging between). This is apparently good for increasing lactate threshold, VO2 max, and speed generally. Another session I tried was 6x [2 mins almost the fastest I could do (around 4:10/km for me) + 3 mins jogging recovery] with warmup and cooldown. I’m not sure how effective this workout was for me (fast parts too fast, requiring too much recovery to maintain in between and not getting the average HR high enough, maybe).
- Progressive runs (e.g. 8km starting at 6:00+/km and speeding up every 1-2 kilometers up to sub-5:00/km for the last one). Good for getting experience speeding up or not slowing even when your legs are tired.
- Long runs: some were low HR, others incorporate another workout within them. To not overdo training intensity, I alternated these each weekend between a slow one and one that included one or more tempo (moderately-hard) sections. When I started, I was exhausted after the tempo version that was 16km at 6:00/km with the middle 5k speeding up to 5:15/km. Later I did one that was 3x(3km @ 5:15/km and 1km slow) + warmup/cooldown, this also felt exhausting at the time but was clearly showed improvement on the previous one. Both were slower than my final race which was 21km at 5:06/km average.
Nutrition: For the race itself I used High5 energy gels. I took my own and avoided aid stations as they were crowded. I don’t particularly like using a lot of “fake” nutrition but it’s needed when you’re working hard in the race (as I found out when I ran out of energy on an early training long run), and it’s also worth practising on the long runs. I would use 1-2 on long training runs, and had 3 during the race. Practising helps you to find ones that are compatible with your digestive system and can consume easily whilst running.
Sleep: Is generally considered important for proper recovery from difficult workouts, and I can definitely agree that my performance is better after proper sleep than otherwise. Related to this is that alcohol disrupts sleep, even a single drink can make a notable difference. I cut out most alcohol for the duration of my training.
Taper: Slowing down training close to a race can make a big difference –I reduced volume by 30% starting two weeks before and only did low-intensity + 1km fast at around 30% of maximum distance in the 7 days leading up to the HM. I am very sure this made a big difference for me: some people say they feel niggles more in the taper period as healing/recovery happens, and I certainly noticed this/was worried about it, but I was totally ready on the day. For longer training blocks I’ve heard people insert “recovery weeks” periodically, although in my case I think I didn’t have enough time to make this work.
Equipment
I really tried not to buy anything fancy. I didn’t want my running to become about having fancy kit and spending money.
Watch: My running watch is a second-hand Garmin Forerunner 245. It’s great and nothing fancier is needed, but it’s definitely worth having a watch suited to this as I found my Fitbit (daily watch) to be unreliable and inaccurate. Conversely, the Garmin is a bad daily watch because it has the worst sleep tracking out of Fitbit/Google and Apple. That being said, I didn’t buy the watch until after over a year of just using my phone.
Shoes: My shoes are Altra Escalante Racer (which are good if you’re used to barefoot shoe-style walking, otherwise you probably want to find something different as these have no heel rise) at around £115/pair (though they don’t last well, I start mixing in a new pair after around 500k and they’re dead at around 800km).
Foam roller: I got this when I had a bit of calf soreness and a friend said it worked miracles when they had similar issues. I would agree and I got an AmazonBasics one for <£20. That being said, I also was careful not to overtrain, and generally increased intensity by no more than 10% per week or between comparable sessions.
Otherwise, I have shorts from Amazon (<£20/pair), technical running underwear (I got wool-rich ones but they aren’t available anymore), and basic technical T-Shirts (I’ve been using walking ones I’ve had for many years…).
I subscribe to Strava but honestly it’s not that necessary. Garmin Connect, the free app that you get access to with their watch, has almost everything that Strava does apart from the social aspect of it.
Conclusion
The main thing that I didn’t do that i think would’ve helped was some kind of strength training for core and legs, which I’ll probably look into for future.
I hope this gives someone a helpful start. Post how you trained for your first half in the comments, or feel free to ask questions!
AndyHacks 