You are probably well into your Half Marathon Training Schedule by now, so it's time to take a look at some of the more detailed stuff that will help you get prepared for the big day.  Here are three tips to help you along that path.

   1. Alternate Easy and Hard Weeks.  With the schedule as written, this is not obvious.  You are already alternating easy and hard days, but your body will thank you for doing the same with the weeks.  This may require a little imagination, but you can tell when you're pushing to your limits, so just push a bit harder on the hard weeks and a bit less on the easy ones.   You will still do the same mix of hill repeats, tempo runs, pace runs, intervals and easy runs. To make sure that you get good workouts on each of these, you may find it convenient to change the schedule a little.  One way to do this is to do two weeks of each routine instead of one.  Make the first the easy week, then go hard for the second week.  The key to my training schedule is to keep it flexible, but make sure that you don't miss out on any of the activities.  Another trick is to cross train on one of your days off during the hard week and just rest that day on the easy week.  Be imaginative, and tune the schedule to what works for you, taking into account your time constraints and other conditions.

   2. Build Your Weekly Mileage, Not Just the Long Runs.  Your long runs should not be more than about half of your total weekly mileage.  This means that by the time you're running 15 miles for your long run, your total mileage that week will be 30 miles or more.  Unless you're a lot faster than me, you won't get that from 30 minute sessions, so the duration of the other workouts during the week will start to increase as your long runs increase.  You're now starting to reach that balance point between over-training (and getting stale), and getting injured due to running long when your body isn't trained enough for it.  This is when you can appreciate the variety in my training routine.  You can make any of the different runs longer to take up the weekly slack, but the easiest and most pleasant one for me is the fartlek runs.  These are runs where I just put in speed bursts whenever I feel like it, so running longer on those runs can be as easy or as hard as I choose to make it.  The other good runs to go longer on are tempo runs, where you can add an extra stage by going easy, moderate, slightly hard and very hard and then coming back down the scale.  If you run a five stage tempo run in 30 minutes, a 7 stager will be 50 minutes and will add 30-40% to your mileage for that run.  Similarly, for intervals you can add an interval or two, or make the intervals longer.  One of the benefits of a flexible schedule like mine is that you can easily ring the changes on which runs you vary.

   3. Add Some Stretches.  As you push your body harder, aches and pains will start to appear in new places.  This is not necessarily a sign that you're pushing too hard -- it probably just means that you need to stretch more.  If you have not already done so, this is the time to get a good stretching book, and add some stretches for those parts that are starting to hurt.  The piriform and ITB stretches are especially important at this stage.

And the bonus tip is:
 
Enjoy your training!