Bristol half marathon training

[Phill360JL]

Hiya, I’m training for the Bristol half marathon in September & started with the couch to 5K to get me motivated once again!

So, with 13 weeks remaining there’s still plenty of time to alter my training schedule & make gradual steps up.

[backintime Graduate]

couch to 5K is a 9 week programme, that leaves you 4 weeks to go from 5K (assuming you do 5K in 30 mins) to HM? Are you doing some abridged version? It seems a lot to think that you can do 5K to HM in 4 weeks (I freely admit to not having experience with HM training...)

[Phill360JL in reply to backintime]

In hindsight, I’ve ran half marathons & the London marathon before (albeit 20 years ago). My biggest barrier is that I haven’t run for 7/8 years. Wish me luck.

[Deals1 Graduate]

ohhh .. Im no expert at all, but this sounds like a big commitment ... unless you have prev experience

happy running

[Algernon_Moncrieff]

A lot depends on your level of fitness and dare I say it age and weight before you start running. If you’re starting from scratch then I would say that 13 weeks is not enough time to get you from nothing to 13 miles or 21km.

Bear in mind that the majority of C25K graduates are not actually reaching the 5k mark by the time they finish week 9 so you are looking to run another 4 times that in the remaining time. You can just about get to 10k in 13 weeks but that would be running almost every other day and hope you don’t pick up an injury (which with that intensity of running is unlikely)

That’s not to say you won’t get round the route with a mixture of walk / running, but certainly don’t expect to run it all.

Really would not want to be the purveyor of bad news but I think you’ve got to be realistic, as someone who has tried and failed a number of times to get to HM distance, you’d be surprised of the level of training you need to put in.

Can you perhaps look to defer and run next years?

[Phill360JL in reply to Algernon_Moncrieff]

I know this is a long time coming, thanks for your reply last year 😳. I haven’t been on here for ages, my apologies. I ran the half marathon back in September. 2 hours 36 mins. This was my first one for a decade’ so pleased with my efforts. Running definitely gets harder as you get older!

[ButtercupKid Graduate]

Good for you ! ⭐️ We’re all here cheering you on. Keep us posted !

[Algernon_Moncrieff]

Excellent work, it does get harder as you get older, back on week 8 of C25K to at least get out of the house when working from home and Runkeeper reliably told me that my 28min effort this morning was my 98th fastest run, it should have just stuck to well done!!!!