Half Marathon Goal Times What it takes to break 2 hours in the half marathon

What pace is a 2-hour half marathon?

In 2013, Ellie Goulding rescheduled a few tour dates so she could run the Nike Women's Half Marathon in Washington, DC. Asked about training discipline, the singer told The Fader: "I'm quite an impatient runner. I just want to run fast and do it. But then I've had to slow myself down, because I know that I won't be able to run at the pace that I'm running at for 13 miles."

That's the whole puzzle of a sub-2 half. One 9:09 mile isn't hard for most runners chasing this goal. Running 13 of them in a row is. Hal Higdon puts the math right in his Intermediate 1 plan: "If you're training for a 2:00 half marathon, your average pace per mile is 9:09," he writes. Here's where that pace puts you along the way.

Half marathon = 13.1094 miles (21.0975 km). Even pace, rounded to the nearest second. For every goal from 1:30 to 3:00, see the half marathon pace chart.

Give yourself a few seconds of cushion. Courses are measured along the shortest possible route, and nobody runs every corner that tight, so your watch will likely read a little long. At 13.2 miles, 9:09 on your watch finishes after 2 hours. Aim for about 9:05. Buena Vida's sub-2 plans set goal pace at 9:06 for the same reason.

Is sub-2 a good half marathon time? Yes. Across 35 million race results, RunRepeat found the middle finisher at about 2:15: about 2:00 for men and 2:24 for women. Breaking 2 puts you ahead of the typical finisher.

How many miles a week do you need to break 2 hours?

Stephen Seiler, an exercise physiologist at the University of Agder in Norway, studies how endurance athletes train. "From our research, it's clear that elite athletes (including Kipchoge) train around 80% of the time at what we'd call low intensity, and they spend just 20 per cent of their time training hard," he told Runner's World. And not just for full-timers: "We undertook further research and showed that it's equally relevant if you're training four sessions a week or 14." And he sees the same mistake in everyday runners. "Many recreational runners feel like they must go hard every time, so they do a lot of training in this threshold area," he said. "They'll improve initially, but then they stagnate."

So the miles matter, and so does how you run them. The plans in the list above start at about 14 to 21 miles a week (Runner's World's Break 2:00 asks for 20, held for six months). They peak at about 25 to 40: near 28 to 30 for Buena Vida's 3-day plans, 35 for the 4-day, and 40 for the 5-day, with Break 2:00 around 30 and Higdon's Intermediate 1 around 34. Long runs top out at 12 to 15 miles.

You can do it on 3 days a week. The 3-day plans use fewer, longer runs, and every run has a job. More days spread the same work out.

Wherever you start, start near what you run now and climb slowly, because a single run well past anything you've done in the past month is a common way to get hurt. And keep the easy runs easy. How fast you run your miles adds stress the weekly total misses, and easy running is the base that lets the faster days work.

What a sub-2 training week looks like

Hal Higdon sums up a week of his Intermediate 1 plan in one line: "Typical Week: 1 X-Train, 5 Run, 2 Day Off." The day off before the weekend is on purpose, he explains: "This is why I prescribe rest on Fridays to get ready for the hard weekend." Every day has a job, including the days you don't run.

Here's week 6 of Buena Vida's 12-Week Sub-2 Half Marathon (4 days), from the middle of the build. Goal pace in this plan is 9:06 a mile.

About 32 miles of running. Easy means a pace you could talk at.

This week has 2 hard days, and both aim right at the race. This week Wednesday is even longer than Saturday, once you add the warm-up and cool-down. Thursday's tempo is a shade quicker than goal pace: comfortably hard, not fast. Everything else is easy. And the two short strength sessions earn their place: strength work lowers injury risk more than stretching does, and about two sessions a week is enough.

Now the food column. A 10.5-mile long run burns roughly 1,100 calories for a 150-pound runner, and Wednesday's 12 miles a bit more. Eat the same every day and you'll run the two days that matter most on too little. So the food follows the training. Trying to lose a few pounds along the way? You can, gently. Aim for about half a percent to one percent of your weight a week, take it from the week's food overall, and keep the carbs around your hard sessions, because those are the days a sub-2 is built on.

The key workout: repeats at goal pace

Seiler has a second warning, and this one is about the hard days. "Often, when people do intervals, they think they have to get to a point where they throw up," he told Runner's World. "We don't see that with the elite athletes." The athletes he studies spend their hard minutes a notch below all-out, at about 90 percent instead of 95.

That's the spirit of the sub-2 key workout: goal pace, in pieces, under control. In Buena Vida's 4-day plan, it's Wednesday's repeats at 9:06 with easy jogs between, growing from 7 half-mile repeats in week 3 to 9 of 0.75 mile by week 6. The early reps feel easy. The last few teach you to hold pace when you're tired, which is exactly what miles 10 to 13 will ask.

Then the pieces join up. In week 9, Wednesday becomes 5 miles straight at goal pace, and Saturday's 14-mile long run carries 3 goal-pace miles in the middle. Other plans take other routes: Higdon runs "the pace you hope to run in your goal half marathon" on Saturdays, and Break 2:00 leans on faster repeats and tempo miles. That's fine: threshold work and race-pace work are different kinds of training, and either is reasonable for recreational runners. What matters is that the hard days are hard enough, the easy days are easy, and you show up fueled. A 12-mile Wednesday on an empty stomach is a long, slow lesson.

What to eat while you train for a sub-2 half

Keira D'Amato returned to competitive running in 2017 while selling real estate and raising two young kids, and in 2021 she won the US half marathon title. "I have to make sure I am eating enough," she told Richmond Family Magazine. "When I don't have enough protein, I get weak. I feel malnourished without enough carbs."

Food is where training turns into fitness: eat enough, and the training builds you up.

Eat for the day. The goal-pace session and the long run get the most food. Rest days are normal eating days, not a time to save calories.

Refill after hard runs. Carbs and protein soon after goal-pace work or a long run ready your legs for the next one.

Spread protein through the day. Some at each meal helps you repair, and runners need more protein and carbs than people who don't train.

Eating too little shows up as heavy legs, workouts that get harder instead of easier, stalled paces, more colds, and bad sleep, all on the International Olympic Committee's list of signs that an athlete isn't eating enough. It also raises the risk of bone stress injuries. If a few sound familiar, add food before you add miles.

How you’ll know you’re on track

Your training will tell you whether 2:00 fits, as long as you can see it. Three checks are worth watching.

Goal-pace sessions. Holding 9:06 evenly through the last rep, or the last mile of the 5-mile run in week 9, is a great sign you're ready. Slipping by 5 to 10 seconds at the end? Still in reach. Fighting for pace from the first rep, week after week? A 2:05 goal will be more fun to chase.

Easy runs. Compare an easy run from week 1 with one from week 8. The same pace with a lower heart rate means your fitness is showing up, and an Apple Watch reads heart rate accurately enough to show it.

A tune-up race. A 10K a few weeks out is a great test (Higdon's Intermediate 1 builds in two tune-ups). Under about 54 minutes points to a 2-hour half by Peter Riegel's formula, and it's good pacing practice too.

The record catches trouble, too: a long run that jumped too far, a week where you ran more and ate less. Those are easy to miss when your runs live in one app, your food in another, and your plan on the fridge.

Race day

In January 2023, Emily Sisson lined up at the Houston Half Marathon without a pacer of her own. Her coach had suggested she run 5:03 a mile with a group of men. The group she found was going faster, and she went with it. "I think that I misjudged the pace a bit to open it and really slowed down," she said afterward. She still finished in 1:06:52, an American record, and she was "able to pick it up the last half-mile." Next time, she said, she'd try for "a more even-paced race."

If one of the fastest half marathoners in American history can get swept up in a fast start, so can you. The last weeks of your plan get lighter on purpose, because running less before a race, while keeping a little speed, helps you race better. You'll feel fresh, and 9:09 will feel like a jog early on. That's the trap.

So run the first mile at 9:10 to 9:15, and let the crowd go. Check your time at the 5K mark (about 28:26) and 10K (about 56:53). Take your gel around mile 6 or 7, before you think you need it. Hold the effort on hills, not the pace. And if you still feel good at mile 10, that's your moment. The last 3 miles are a distance you know by heart.