My Half Marathon Training Schedule!

With the help of several friends and templates I found on Pinterest, I have finally compiled a skeleton of a training schedule for myself!

The best schedules I found had a good balance of running and other exercise like cardio, strength training, and yoga. It's a lot to take on for someone who is not used to frequent, regimented exercise, but I definitely wanted to include all of these in my training to stay well rounded. But I still wanted to make sure that running was the dominant player in my training, of course.

Also, most of the training schedules I found include different types of running: long runs, slow and steady runs, "tempo" runs, etc. I tried to incorporate as many of these into the schedule as I could.

In the end, there just aren't enough days in the week to cram in everything I'd like to do. I decided that some things I would do every week, and some I would have to alternate between weeks. I also tried to keep the schedule the same for each week.

• Monday - Yoga OR easy run
• Tuesday - Easy run OR yoga
• Wednesday - Hills or tempo or sprint/walk running (alternate)
• Thursday - Cardio/strength train OR REST
• Friday - REST OR Cardio/strength train
• Saturday - Long Run
• Sunday - REST

So, a sample week might look like this:

• Monday: Easy run, 3 miles
• Tuesday: Yoga class
• Wednesday: Tempo run, 3 miles
• Thursday: Swimming
• Friday: REST
• Saturday: 6 miles
• Sunday: REST

I am still hashing out the week-by-week schedule; obviously, with my half marathon nine months away, I've got some time. This is actually the big challenge I'm having with compiling a training plan: it's so far away still. No training plan I've come across has catered to a half marathon that's so far in the future. That's why my friend Kelsey's training plan was such a huge help to me: it schedules about 6 months out, which is much closer to the time frame I'm looking at. Most schedules I come across are 12-week plans. So what I've had to do is find a way to "stretch" them out to accommodate my longer training time. My plan is to do this by 1) repeating some weeks verbatim in the beginning of my training - instead of going from 3 to 3.5 miles on my runs, for example, I just stay at 3; and 2) shortening some of my weeks in the beginning, for example, cutting out the yoga class and the easy run from the example above.

Another idea I have is for the earlier weeks to have a heavier focus on the variety exercise like cardio and strength training, and then have these things gradually taper off (but not disappear) so I can focus more on the running.

So, here is what I still need to do:

1. Come up with a final schedule
2. Figure out what to do for strength training

Thanks so much to everyone who has helped and offered to help so far. It means a lot to me that so many people are supportive of my journey and willing to run it with me, even if only figuratively :-)

If anyone has suggestions for what I should modify about or add to my training plan, PLEASE let me know. I could use all the help I can get!