Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Half Marathon: Advanced

Does it build you up smartly?

In outline, yes. In detail, a lot is left to you.

The plan's shape is sound, but its sessions come with almost no instructions. The schedule names each hard day and stops there. Tuesday might say 6 hill repeats. It doesn't say how long the hill should be, how hard to run up it, how to recover on the way down, or what the session is building. Thursday says 45-minute tempo and nothing about how that tempo should unfold. The page you train from is bare, and a runner new to this kind of training will be guessing.

What the outline gets right is rhythm. Every third week eases off, and lighter weeks like these are when the body absorbs the work before them. The hard work also changes across the 12 weeks. Hills and short, fast repeats in the first half build strength and speed. In the second half, longer repeats and longer runs at race pace take over, so the training looks more like the race as the race gets closer. Training that shifts its emphasis in blocks tends to race better than training that repeats the same load week after week.

The tune-up races fit that rhythm too. Each lighter week ends with one, so you race on legs that have had a few easier days.

Does it protect you from injury?

Sharp jumps in weekly running raise the risk of injury, and the risk climbs fastest when one week runs far beyond what came before it.

This plan avoids those jumps. Weekly running rises a little at a time, and every third week eases off. The step into the second half, when long runs move up to 1 hour 45 minutes, comes right after a lighter week. Tuesday's and Thursday's sessions always have an easy run between them, and each one opens and closes with an easy mile.

The book does more on injury than the schedule shows. It teaches the warning signs to watch for and has a chapter on pool running. That counts for something, because a nagging, low-grade ache appears to raise the odds of an injury that stops you running, and spotting one early gives you the chance to ease off.

But strength is missing. The book gives general guidance on strength work, and none of it appears on this schedule. Strength training cuts the risk of sports injuries substantially, more than stretching does, and on a plan with 3 hard days most weeks, its absence is a real gap. What to do, and how to fit it around Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend, is up to you.

What happens when you miss a day?

Less than you'd want. When a week goes sideways, the book gives you a rule of thumb, but no plan for what comes next. It lets you swap days, and asks only that you not miss two days in a row. It doesn't say which runs to drop first in a short week, or how to rejoin the plan after several days away. Reworking the weeks around a gap is up to you.

Effort works the same way. You set your goal pace yourself, from recent workouts or a short race, and the rest is run by feel. The tune-up races give you a fresh read on your fitness every 3 weeks, but nothing tells you how to turn a result into new targets for Tuesday and Saturday. Runners who like training by feel will find that freeing. Runners who want numbers will find it vague.

Will it get you ready for race day?

A half marathon is run close to the line between an effort you can sustain and one you can't. Raise that line, and the pace you can hold for 13.1 miles goes up too. Threshold fitness is built by running at that effort, again and again.

This plan gives you that every week. Thursday's tempo run never leaves the schedule, and by week 11 it lasts a full hour, long enough that its middle stretch starts to feel like the middle of a race. In most building weeks, Saturday adds a few miles at race pace, so the effort you'll hold on race day stops feeling foreign.

The long run builds the endurance underneath, growing from 90 minutes to 2 hours. Every other one finishes faster, so you practice running hard on legs that are already tired.

Coaches like tune-up races because they rehearse what workouts can't: race morning, the start line, the pull to go out too fast. A 5K, a 10K and a 15K give you three tries at it. There's some evidence that racing experience helps mostly by teaching pacing.

The taper is short, a single lighter week before the half. The thinking behind a short taper is that a fit runner sheds fatigue quickly and can lose sharpness if the break runs long. A taper before a goal race improves race performance, and this one gives you a fresher week to arrive on.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Yes. Over 12 weeks you'll run hill repeats, 400-meter repeats at 5K pace, 800-meter repeats at 5K and 10K pace, mile repeats, tempo runs, runs at race pace, long runs with a faster finish, and three races. Each one works on a different part of your fitness, and mixing easy running with genuinely hard intervals builds endurance better than long stretches at a steady, moderately hard pace.

But the easy running doesn't grow with the rest. Monday and Wednesday are 3 miles in week 1 and still 3 miles in week 11. All the growth in the plan lives on Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend. Only about 60 percent of the running is easy, and easy miles are what carry the hard training and help the body adapt to it. By week 10, when the weekend brings race pace on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday, those short easy days have a lot to absorb.

Hill work is thin too. Hill repeats appear only in weeks 1, 3 and 5, and there are no strides, the brief, fast pickups some plans add to the end of an easy run. They make runners more efficient, and they cost only a few minutes.