Running Plan Review Hal Higdon Half Marathon: Intermediate 2

Does it build you up smartly?

A build earns the name when its hard days change as race day approaches: general fitness first, then running that looks more and more like the race. Training that shifts its emphasis from block to block produces better races than holding one steady load.

This plan doesn't make that shift. Track repeats arrive in week 1, tempo and race pace running in week 2, and those same three sessions rotate to the end. What grows is the amount: 5 repeats become 10. The runner in week 10 is doing the same sessions as in week 2, only more of each: a 45-minute tempo instead of 30, and 5 miles at race pace instead of 3. There is no stretch of easier base running first, and no point where the hard days turn toward the race. Each session is also a single line on the schedule. It gives you the numbers, but not what the run is for or how it should feel. The book explains both, in chapters of their own.

The overall arc is good, though. The running builds steadily from week to week, the long run climbs by a mile every Sunday that isn't a race, and every few weeks the load eases off, usually in a week that ends with a tune-up race. Those lighter weeks earn their place, because the body absorbs hard training during the easier stretches that follow it. You come out of each one ready for the next block of work, not dragging it behind you.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The plan protects you in several sensible ways, but two gaps sit right where a runner stepping up from an easier plan is most exposed.

The first is week 2. Tempo running and race pace running both show up for the first time that week, while your total running climbs by about a quarter. Sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk, and the faster running counts for more than the mileage suggests, because distance alone misses the extra strain that pace and intensity add. Week 8 is the other big step, with Saturday's race pace run and Sunday's long run growing in the same weekend. Many running injuries seem to begin suddenly, often set off by a training error the week before, so these are the two weeks to pay the closest attention to how your legs feel.

The second gap is strength. Higdon's book encourages it in general terms, but gives no program and puts no sessions on the schedule. For a runner with an old injury, that's the missing piece: regular strength training substantially lowers the risk of sport injury, and here you have to build it into the week yourself.

The rest is solid. Friday is a rest day in every week (twice, an easy run is allowed instead), and Monday's cross-training gives your legs a break from impact. The two harder runs each week, Wednesday and Saturday, never land on consecutive days. Every Wednesday session has an easy mile of warm-up and cool-down written in. And the book gives two whole chapters to avoiding and handling injury, with a list of signs that you're training too hard. Read them in week 1, not week 8. A low-grade ache that hangs around between runs appears to raise the risk of an injury that interrupts training, and the runner who knows the signs backs off sooner.

What happens when you miss a day?

Over 12 weeks, most runners lose a run or two somewhere. What matters is whether the plan tells you what to do about it.

Here, the guidance is thin. The book gives two clear rules: you can swap days around, and you can miss a single day but shouldn't miss two in a row. It does talk about missed days and lost fitness, but loosely, with no tables for coming back and no set order for which runs to drop first. Effort is guided by feel: easy runs at a pace you could talk through, race pace runs at your goal pace. There are no heart rate ranges in this version of the plan, so when your goal pace feels harder than it should on a Saturday, deciding how much to back off is your call. The explanations that would help are thorough, but spread across many chapters.

But the week has room to bend. Friday is free in most weeks and Monday is given to cross-training, so a missed run has somewhere to go. The shape is simple enough to rearrange in your head, and the book lets you do it.

Will it get you ready for race day?

Yes. Race preparation is this plan's strongest side.

Holding a strong pace for a whole half depends on your threshold, the hardest effort you can sustain for a long stretch, and threshold gains come from training at that pace. This plan works on it from week 2 on: a tempo run every other Wednesday, building toward the effort you could race a 10K at and growing from 30 minutes to 45, and race pace runs on half the Saturdays, growing from 3 miles to 5. By race day, your goal pace is a feeling you know, not a number you're hoping to hold.

The long run adds a mile every Sunday that isn't a race, from 5 miles to 12, so the distance grows with you rather than in leaps.

The tune-up races are the plan's best feature. A 5K in week 3, a 10K in week 6 and a 15K in week 9 each teach you something: how to pace a race, how your body handles a start line, and where your fitness really is. The 15K is more than two thirds of the half at race effort, and its result tells you whether the goal pace on your Saturday runs is the right one.

Week 11 is the last big one, with the most track repeats of the plan, 10 of them, on Wednesday and the 12-miler on Sunday. Then race week is the taper: three short runs, one of them a shorter tempo, and a taper like this reliably makes runners faster on race day.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Before any run, it helps to know what it's for. Most runners improve more by keeping easy days truly easy and hard days clearly hard, and by mixing several kinds of hard work across the weeks.

This plan's hard days are clearly hard, but there are only three kinds, and they never change. Track repeats, tempo runs and race pace runs rotate from week 1 to week 11, and what changes is how many repeats or how many minutes. A runner who likes routine will find that reassuring. One who wants each block to bring something new will find week 9 a lot like week 3.

The bigger gap is the short, fast work. Strides, brief relaxed bursts of speed, never appear on the schedule; the book mentions them as part of a warm-up and leaves it there. They take a few minutes, and short, fast efforts like these improve running economy, the energy each stride costs you. Strength, which also makes running more efficient, is missing from the calendar too.

Saturday's race pace runs have a real job: they teach you what goal pace feels like, so race day holds no surprises. But between those Saturdays and a race every third Sunday, a fair share of your running lands at a steady, comfortably hard effort, so keeping Tuesday and Thursday truly easy matters more than it looks.

What the plan does have is range: easy runs, long runs, track repeats, tempo runs, race pace runs and races. The track repeats, single laps at 5K effort growing from 5 to 10, are the sharpest work of the week, and mixing clearly hard work like that into easy running builds endurance better than long stretches of steady, moderately hard running.