One of the biggest challenges you may face when following a
training schedule for a half marathon is a lack
of time. Yes, that old chestnut. You can’t beat time, it’s constantly ticking
away.
But with a little bit of organizing and
planning, you can still make enough time to follow a well balanced training schedule. The key
factor here is to work in smaller, more intense chunks of time.
If you get as
much as you can out of every session then you should still be able to progress quickly and
increase your mileage even if you are extremely short of time.
Here are the key factors you need to
consider...
Train
Smart
To make the best use of your time, you need use
more advanced running sessions such as intervals, hill reps and
pyramid training etc. These sessions are very challenging and are a great way to build more power
in to legs and strength and stamina in the heart and lungs.
Use Your Time
Wisely
We can all make a little extra time for
ourselves if we really need to. Now to some this may mean getting up 30 minutes earlier in a
morning or getting out for a quick session at lunchtime or running home from work for example.
Whilst squeezing workouts around a busy lifestyle isn’t an ideal situation, if it’s that or nothing
at all then it’s still your best option.
Run On The Weekend
There’s one thing you’ll definitely need to do
and that is get in a longer run each week. In a well written training schedule for a half
marathon, you’ll find that the distance should gradually but steadily increase over the course
of the program. You don’t really need to do more than one distance run each week, but this has to
be a definite session... you can’t miss. For most people this means sparing the time at the
weekend.
Use A
Treadmill
If you really do struggle with time, using a
treadmill at home might be a better option because you can run no matter what the weather, time of
day or lack of energy etc. Even if it means doing just 10 minutes before work, a power walk at
lunchtime and a short speed session whilst your dinner is cooking, it’s all better than
nothing.
Using a treadmill means that it’s very easy to
get started straight away, you don’t have to worry about getting layered up or specially prepared
in any way.
Obviously in an ideal world, we’d all have the
time to devote completely to our training schedule for a half marathon, but the reality is somewhat
different. We need to build up to running 13.1 miles in one go and that’s always going to take time
if done properly. So look at ways to make it work and consider your training days at the beginning
of each week to avoid any potential problems.
If you want to know more about training for a
half marathon, then my new half marathon running guide ‘Half Marathon Training For
Beginners' is an excellent choice...
You’ll find it a great resource to help you
plan your training but also it's a fantastic reference guide for the times when you
need inspiration and new ideas to make your workouts more interesting.
If you think
you’d be a better runner if you knew...
-
What to eat and
when
-
How, why and
when to train so you get fitter, stronger and more confident
-
What to do
to avoid picking up niggling injuries
-
How to build up to
race day distance in the shortest amount of time
Then you
need ‘Half Marathon Training for Beginners’ – A half marathon training
schedule which gets you results – FAST.
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