Capitol 10K in Austin, March 29, 2009


Thousands of people have asked me why I have a site called halftrainingschedule.com No, not thousands, a few hundred, maybe. Well, perhaps a few ...

(Actually, I'm almost sure someone asked me once.)

The answer is quite simple. I enjoy running, and wanted to create a site for others who might be interested in starting. I already had two sites (beginning-running.com and gettingstartedrunning.com), but neither one was what I wanted.

Searching for suitable keywords that were not taken, I found this one. Since I had already started training for a half at the time, it seemed perfect. So I took it.

I had already discovered that there are not many half training schedules around for beginners: it is a distance that, until recently, has been largely ignored. If you're a beginner, you don't need to train for a 5K, or even a 10K: just run it! But there are lots of schedules available for the marathon.

Marathon training takes a significant investment in time and effort that not many beginning runners are interested in. Why would anyone start out by running a marathon (unless they're already an accomplished athlete like Lance Armstrong)?

But the half marathon is a great goal for a beginning runner. It's long enough that it takes a while to train for it, but not so long that it will take over your life! And anyone who can walk 30 minutes can build up to a half marathon, running, walking or mixing the two.

The other great thing about the distance is that it is possible to keep to a fairly flexible schedule. When I first trained for a marathon I twisted my knee (windsurfing) and lost too much time to complete my training. With the half, I pulled a hamstring, which set my half training schedule back 9 weeks altogether, but I'll still make the half at the end of this month. I'll probably walk quite a lot of it, but that's OK!

So, if you want to get fit this year, if you want to lose some weight, if you want to spend more time outdoors – whatever your reason – why not go for the half marathon? I have a training schedule for you that takes into account where you are now, what your goal is and how long you have to train. Best of all, it can be adjusted to fit your own needs, since no two runners are alike.

As a first step, sign up as a member of this site (it's free) and get the goodies in the members' area.