Your Plan: Training for Your First Half Marathon

Your Plan: Training for Your First Half Marathon

A first half marathon is as much a mental milestone as a physical one -- 13.1 miles is genuinely far, and the plan that gets you there safely looks different from one built for someone chasing a specific time. The priority for a beginner build is a gradual, patient increase in weekly mileage and long-run distance, with enough recovery built in that you arrive at the start line healthy rather than just barely surviving your last few training weeks.

A typical beginner half plan runs 12-16 weeks, four runs a week, with the long run gradually stretching from wherever your current base sits up to 10-11 miles two to three weeks before race day (the race itself provides the final push to 13.1). The classic mistake at this stage is increasing weekly mileage too fast -- a widely used guideline is capping increases at roughly 10% per week, with a lighter recovery week roughly every third or fourth week to let your body actually absorb the training.

Pace should stay secondary to distance for a first half marathon. Nearly all of your training miles -- including most of the long run -- should be run at an easy, conversational effort; a beginner build generally doesn't need dedicated tempo or interval sessions the way a time-focused intermediate plan does. Knowing roughly what pace you can sustain for 13.1 miles still matters for race-day pacing (starting too fast is the single most common way a first half marathon falls apart in the last 3 miles), so it's worth setting a conservative target pace ahead of time rather than guessing.

Fueling and hydration become a real factor once long runs stretch past about 75-90 minutes, which they will for most of your final month of training. Practicing your race-day fueling plan -- what you'll eat and drink, and when -- on at least two or three long training runs beforehand avoids finding out something doesn't sit well with you on race morning itself.

Cross-training and strength work (even just two short sessions a week) meaningfully reduce injury risk at this mileage level, since running-only training asks the same muscles and joints to absorb impact repeatedly with no variation. If a niggling ache shows up, an easy day or extra rest almost never costs you the race -- pushing through it very often does.

Source: general beginner half-marathon progression guidance (the roughly-10%-per-week mileage rule and periodic recovery weeks) consistent with RRCA and Hal Higdon-style beginner programs. This is training guidance, not medical advice -- see a doctor before starting if you have a health condition or are new to distance running.

How Beginner Half Marathon compares

* Illustrative figures -- use the calculators below for your exact numbers.