Running Plan Review Greg McMillan Half Marathon: Novice

Does it build you up smartly?

A first half marathon is mostly a question of time on your feet. The body gets there in small steps, with a pause every few weeks to let the new work settle in. A lighter week every so often lets built-up tiredness clear, so your body takes in the weeks before it, and runners who train this way tend to progress further, with fewer injuries, than runners who add load every week.

McMillan builds exactly that. Weeks 4, 8 and 11 shrink the sessions back, so your body gets a few easier days to catch up. Each session spells out the total minutes, how long each run lasts and how long each walk lasts. You always know exactly what a session asks of you.

The plan also uses its first lighter week cleverly. Week 4 is shorter overall, but its Sunday session is the first one where you run as much as you walk. The new mix arrives in a week with less total time on your feet, so the change gets a gentle landing.

But the plan has one shape from start to finish. The sessions grow and the walks shrink, and that's all that changes. Training that shifts its emphasis in stages tends to produce better races than training that never changes its focus. For a runner whose goal is to finish, that costs less than it would for a runner chasing a time. But it does mean week 10 asks the same kind of thing as week 1, only for longer.

Does it protect you from injury?

Partly. The plan's rhythm protects you well, but a few steps in the build come faster than the rest, and strength work is left off the calendar.

When you're new to running, the parts of you that improve fastest aren't the ones that get hurt. Your metabolism and blood volume adapt within days to weeks, while tendons and bone take weeks to months. So there's a stretch in the middle of a 12-week plan when the sessions start to feel easier while the slower tissues in your legs are still catching up. That's when a sudden jump is most likely to catch you out, because sharp jumps in weekly running raise injury risk.

Week 5 is the biggest of those jumps. You come out of the first lighter week, and both weekday sessions grow from 24 to 30 minutes to 40 to 50. The mix changes too, from 1 minute in 3 running to 1 in 2, so the running inside them more than doubles. Your breathing will probably handle it fine. Your shins and ankles are the ones doing the new work. If an ache shows up that week and is still there when the next session comes around, ease off, because an ache that hangs around between runs seems to raise the odds of a full injury. Weeks 3 and 7 are the other 2 steps to watch. In all 3, let Wednesday and Saturday be rest days rather than cross-training.

Strength training is the other gap. The book gives you a sample routine and sends you online for the full program. But the schedule never gives it a day, so picking the days and building each session falls to you. Strength training cuts sport injury risk substantially, and more than stretching or balance work, so it's a gap worth closing. With 4 days a week free of running, there's room for it.

The rest of the plan treats your body well. No session is hard, there are never 2 running days in a row, and the walk breaks spread the load of every outing. The book also teaches you to read early warning signs and what to do about each one.

What happens when you miss a day?

A missed day is easy to absorb here. But a missed week is where you're on your own.

The schedule doesn't say what to do after a week away: whether to repeat it, carry on where you left off, or step back. The book offers general advice on adjusting your training around stress and rest, but no rule for a missed week. It also never ranks the 3 sessions outright. The book implies the Sunday session matters most, but it doesn't spell out which run to let go when only 2 will fit.

Small disruptions are another story. There's room: with 3 runs and 4 open days, a missed Tuesday can move to Wednesday without pushing anything else aside. Nearly every session is a range of minutes, and the book lets you take the low end when you're tired, or skip or move a session on a bad day.

McMillan also teaches you to train by effort rather than by pace. The book sorts running into 4 training zones and explains what each one does. At this level, every running stretch sits in the easiest of them, but learning to feel the difference is a skill you'll keep long after race day.

Will it get you ready for race day?

For a first half marathon, readiness comes down to 2 things: enough time on your feet to trust your legs, and fresh legs on race morning. The long session is where the time comes from. Each one shows your body, and your head, that you can keep moving longer than last time.

The plan gets the shape of this right. The Sunday session grows steadily, from 50 to 60 minutes in week 1 to 90 to 105 minutes in week 10, with lighter Sundays in weeks 4 and 8 along the way. Then the plan lets go. Week 11 drops to 42, 42 and 60 minutes, and race week holds just 36 and 24 minutes before the race. You'll feel almost underworked those last days, and that's how a taper should feel: cutting back over the final 1 to 3 weeks improves race performance compared with training straight through. You arrive at the start with legs that feel springy rather than heavy.

But the longest session stops well short of the race. For many run-walkers, 90 to 105 minutes covers a little over half of 13.1 miles, and the race itself will take most of them a good deal longer than that. The final miles will be farther, and longer on your feet, than anything the plan has asked of you, so you'll start with less proof that your legs can carry you there.

Are the workouts varied enough?

Not much. Every session is the same easy run-walk, and for the first months of running, that's mostly right.

For someone new, easy running is the base the rest of training is built on, and a plan that keeps you there for 12 weeks is doing the important work first. The changing run-walk mix gives the weeks a sense of progress, too. The first Sunday you run 2 minutes for every 1 you walk feels like a milestone.

But nothing in the plan ever asks your legs to move a little quicker. There are no strides, the few seconds of quick, smooth running some plans tack onto the end of an easy session. There are no hills and no drills. Even in the final weeks, when you're fit enough to handle a few, the sessions stay the same. That's a missed chance, because short, fast efforts make distance runners more economical, so every minute of the race costs your body a little less.

The sameness cuts both ways. Some runners like it: each week is easy to plan, and you always know what Sunday holds. Others will find the Tuesdays starting to blur together by week 9.