Half marathon

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=half+marathon+training+plan

Running or walking? I've trained for halfs in walking.

Not even a 5K or 10K? wow. way to set your heights on high. You may want to sign up for a 5K that is in 3 months so you can get some kind of sense how well you do in race conditions. Good for setting up your paces.

You didn't say what you are doing now, so I assume that you can run at least 3 miles without stopping? If not, can you at least run 1 mile without stopping? (sorry for the questions, just trying to establish a base of understanding of your fitness).

Some things. Finishing times or speed is not your goal right now. Upping mileage is. The way you do that is start slow and build up slow. Everything is a slow pace (conversational). That means that every time you run, you should be able to hold a normal conversation with a real or imaginary running buddy outloud without worrying about breathing. If you can't speak complete sentences (cause you are breathing too hard) then slow your pace down.

Start with 3 miles (if you can do that) 3x a week. Slowly add a mile to any of the 3 runs every 2 weeks. You should then run 5 miles 3x a week. If that seems like a bit much, add a mile to one of the runs every 3 weeks. 1 or 2 days rest in between runs.

For example:
Week 1: 3 miles, 3 miles, 3 miles
Week 2: 3 miles, 3 miles, 3 miles
Week 3: 4 miles, 3 miles, 3 miles
Week 4: 4 miles, 3 miles, 3 miles
Week 5: 4 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles
Week 6: 4 miles, 4 miles, 3 miles
Week 7: 4 miles, 4 miles, 4 miles
Week 14: 5 miles, 5 miles, 5 miles

At this point add a mile to just one of them
Week 15: 5 miles, 5 miles, 6 miles
Week 16: 5 miles, 5 miles, 6 miles
Week 17: 5 miles, 5 miles, 7 miles
Week 18: 5 miles, 5 miles, 7 miles
Week 19: 5 miles, 5 miles, 8 miles
Week 20: 5 miles, 5 miles, 8 miles

At this point you are building up aerobic fitness.
You may want to add a 4th day in. Cause you are establishing what we call a long run (the longest run of the week).
To establish long runs and maintain safety from getting injured, they should make up between 25-35% of your weekly mileage. At this point they are becomming dangerously high at 45%. Adding a 4th day will help.

Week 21: 5 miles, rest day, 5 miles, rest day, 2 miles, 8 miles, rest day
Week 22: 5 miles, rest day, 5 miles, rest day, 2 miles, 8 miles, rest day
Week 23: 5 miles, rest day, 5 miles, rest day, 3 miles, 8 miles, rest day


You can modify this to whatever works. The goal is to slowly increase weekly mileage without injury. Eventually you will get to a long run of 13 miles and accumlate a weekly mileage of ~40 miles.

Most of the training plans out there have you cram in all of this within 18-22 weeks. You have plenty of time and it would be wise to start right away and do it as slowly as you can to minimize injury. If this seems too slow, there is the 10% rule that says that you can add up to 10% of your weekly mileage to the next week.

So that means if you were in Week 18
5 miles, 5 miles, 7 miles

That is a total of 17 miles. 10% of that is 1.7 miles. (I hate these weird numbers so let's make that 1.5 miles)
So in Week 19 you could run:
5.5 miles, 6 miles, 7 miles
5.5 miles, 6 miles, 7 miles <<< 18.5 miles for the week. 10% = 1.8 miles (let's make that 2)
6 miles, 6.5 miles, 8 miles <<< 20.5 miles for the week. 10% = 2.05 (keep it at 2 miles)
6.5 miles, 7 miles, 9 miles

Just make sure your long run doesn't get too far ahead of 35%. You may need to add an extra day in or even run one in the morning and run extra at night on 1 day.

If at some point you feel like you are happy with the number of miles you are running for the week, you can keep it there and repeat that week multiple times before increasing again. (You have until May.) Sometimes schedules prevent us from running as much as we like, or if you notice your body starting to get extra sore, keep it steady or back off 1 or 2 weeks. We call these cut back weeks.

For example:

Week 23
6.5 miles, 7 miles, 9 miles
Week 24
5 miles, 5 miles, 5 miles <<< cutback week
Week 25
7 miles, 7.5 miles, 10 miles

Cutback weeks are good like once a month maybe less often, maybe more often.
depends on what your body is telling you.

When you get to about January, you can evaluate better what plan may work out for you depending on how well you are progessing with this. Beggining of January is about 16 weeks away from the beginning of May. You will be way beyond the initial weeks of any 18 week HM plan if you can follow this.

Mellieanne1019 wrote: »

Thanks everyone for the great advice of different routines. Sorry I did explain what my fitness goals are just yet. I was certainly visiting New York my hometown and my friend ask me to do one! It's kinda nerve racking so I said sure why not. I have never ran a race or anything. I always wanted to and I'm pretty sure I could do it! I am going to start training next week. I will start with a mile and work myself like that. I wanted practice to do a 5 k then a 10 k but I was going to wait until 3 months after to do my first 5k what is everyone's advice?

A 5K race about 3 months from now is perfect as long as you're doing the training. Make sure you're not running more often than every other day during your training so you're giving your body time to recover from each run. Take two-three days off after a short race, like a 5K, where you're going all out.

I'm with Stoshew71 in that getting in a couple of shorter races would help you mentally prepare for the HM, especially if it's a big race with 10,000+ runners.

Check out Hal Higsdon's training plans too, he's got them for a variety of distances and experience levels. Personally I love the HM distance, I'd rather run a HM than a 5K.....

mwyvr wrote: »

You can do a lot in 9 months.

^ I'm proving this, as are many others here.

Here's my timeline (with no prior fitness)

In early March I bought a Fitbit.
I spent two months power walking
At 2 months I ran my first 5K, having only powered walked for "training". I was slow, but I ran it, and got me hooked on running.
At 3 months I was running 15 miles/week
At 4 months I ran my first 10K, now running 24 miles/week
At 5 to 5.5 months, I felt like I had finally built my "base", where my stamina wasn't my limiting factor. Running 25 to 30 miles/week
At 6 months I ran my first half marathon distance during a slow, long run.

I'm now just over 6.5 months and running 35 to 42 miles/week with 4 to 5 runs/week. I plan on a 15 mile run this weekend.

At nearly 8 months from the day I bought my Fitbit, I'll be running my first half marathon, but I feel I'm ready now.

I post this not to brag about my accomplishments, but to show you a real example of how it is possible. Be realistic in your goals, however. Last week was a down week for me (32 miles) and I still spent nearly 6 hour running, plus perhaps another 4 hours in getting ready, warming up, stretching, and showering. You probably don't need to run as much as I do to finish a marathon, but even if I were to run just 25 miles/week in preparation, that's still at 8.5 hours total for prep/run/post. To be honest, I didn't think about how much time this would take when I started and I think my wife is starting to get annoyed with it.

Be committed and you can certainly do it. A 5K in 3 months is a perfect goal, I think.

mwyvr wrote: »

The good news is May 2016 gives you ample time to be ready. Commit to a regular program of training such as @Stoshew71 has suggested and you'' do great. A 5K in three months is also a great idea to expose you to the race environment and shorten the time before an important goal to keep you motivated.

You can do a lot in 9 months.

Yes, I started C25K in April and ran my first half marathon the following January. If that had actually been my goal at the time I decided to start running, I could probably have done it a couple of months sooner.

I wasn't running nearly as many miles per week as @7lenny7. I ran 3 days per week with 5 "base mileage" runs (worked up to 6-7 miles every run for the last 2 months or so) and one progressively longer run every other Sunday. The farthest long run was 11 miles at two weeks before the race. The base miles are what's really important and they should be about half of the race length. Race day adrenaline will carry you through the rest of it.