Your goal pace for your upcoming half marathon.

The pace you think you could sustain for a half marathon if you raced on today.

The pace you would like to be able to run a 5k at six months from beginning this training plan if you were training specifically for a 5k.

The pace you could race a 5k at if you raced one today.

The pace you would like to be able to run a mile at six months from beginning this training plan if you were training specifically for a mile

The pace you could race a mile at if you raced one today.

“Make your easy days easy and your hard days hard” was one of the best pieces of running advice my Dad gave me coming up in the sport. This advice served me well both as a novice runner and a pro. Make sure you easy days are conversational and easy. Never feel like you are trying to hit a certain pace. Simply enjoy the run. These days are great for blood-flow and recovery purposes. Best to run these on soft surfaces such as grass or dirt if possible to limit pounding on bones, joints, and muscles.

The weird word “fartlek” is a Swedish term that means “speed play.” These runs are meant to be challenging yet playful and fun, where you run hard for a set period of time and run easy for a set period of time. Don’t be overly concerned with pace on these runs.

These can be done on the track or road and are meant to be fast segments done at mile-10k speeds with varying rests between segments. These days are really important to make your half marathon pace feel easy and for increasing the body’s ability to process lactic acid. Intervals are an important piece in building the bridge between your current fitness and where you want your fitness to go.

This can be an easy distance run, or it can have faster running included in the run to condition the legs to running fast on tired legs (to prepare for what you will have to do in your half marathon).

Strides are often performed just prior to races and hard workouts. They can also be done after easy runs to get the legs firing for a hard session coming the next day. These strides should be 5-20 seconds in duration and done in increasing intensity. The first should be done at about 80% your max sprint speed. Every stride thereafter should be done with about 5% more intensity until you've reached 95% your max sprint speed.  

We don't want to go all the way to 100% sprint speed on these as the purpose of strides is two-fold: first, to get your legs neurologically "turned on" and firing (think about feeling like your feet are popping on and off the ground quickly) and secondly, to work on sprint speed.

The term “threshold” gets thrown around a lot in running and can be confusing, so let me try and make this as simple as possible. “Threshold” simply means to “cross over.” When it comes to running, what “crossing over” means is that if you go any faster you will not be able to maintain the pace for the given distance. So, you will have different thresholds for different distances. Your threshold pace for 15 minutes will be a lot different than your threshold for 30 minutes.

Also, it is important to realize that your threshold will change. When I was running professionally my threshold for the marathon was 4:45 per mile when I was at my fittest. Now that I run much less, my threshold for the marathon is around 8:30 per mile pace. The fitter you get, the better your threshold will be.