Question: There's a local half-marathon in mid-October, is it realistic to be ready for such an event as a newbie with only one 10K behind them?
How much training and how long did it take any intermediate runners out there to jump from one to the next ?
I can do 5K in an 35 minutes or so, 10K in 1:15 to 1:30. I don't care about speed and competition, only fitness and weight loss. I jog and
walk if needed at a comfortable pace for my body.
Answer:
10 weeks is plenty of time to run to a finish, you probably wont do an optimum time but you have plenty of time to get some miles in your legs by
increasing your long run distance by 1m per week. I would look up a beginners half marathon schedule on google and see if it looks achievable
with the amount of training time you have. Would advise against ramping up your weekly mileage or number of runs too drastically. Try not to build up
overall mileage or longest run mileage by more than 10-15% per week.
Depends on your school of thought! It varies from 10 miles to longer than the 13 miles based on who you believe.
You definitely need to do at least a 10 mile run, my first 2-3 half marathons I did no more than an 11 mile training run. But doing an 11, 12 or
13 miler would improve your chances of not bonking in the final stages. However if you dont have the time to build up gradually to 11-13 miles, it
is better to do 10 miles rather than ramping up quickly and getting injured
I'd recommend avoiding events longer than 2 hours until you have a substantial amount of training under your belt. When your 10k times indicate
you can break 2 in the half marathon, I'd suggest giving it a shot. You should look for about 54 minutes or so in the 10k.
I am guessing by your times and interest in weight loss that you are carrying some extra weight. Your times will drop rapidly as you lose weight. Until you
get very thin, a 10% drop in weight will produce approximately a 10% drop in your time, and that's without taking into account the effects of aerobic
conditioning which in itself brings about substantial improvements. So, 54 minutes for 10k may not be as far off as it seems. But for now, work on those
5k and 10k times.
The second point others have already raised is that you need to build the length of your long runs. I'd suggest steadily increasing the length of your weekly
long run until it's of about 2 hours duration. Since you are presumably not racing on your long runs, a 2 hour long run will not cover the full
half-marathon distance, it may only cover about 10 miles or so. That's OK, you don't need to run the full race distance in training.
