WALK! Magazine

By Dave McGovern

Or maybe you started out backwards and you’ve already walked a full marathon or two
and now want to cut back and try your speed legs at a shorter distance event.

Rivaling the marathon in popularity these days, the half marathon offers all the excitement,
comparable finishers’ medals, T-shirts and other “goodies,” without requiring nearly as
much training or post-event recovery time that a full marathon does.

Entering a half can also give you motivation to get out the door every day if your goals run
toward weight loss or fitness rather than pure competitive drive.

The thing to remember about the half is that even though halves are often held
concurrently with full marathons — many walker-friendly marathons like Mardi Gras, Mobile
and Sacramento have accompanying half marathons on the same day — the half is a lot
closer in distance to a 10K than it is to a full marathon.

Training, then, will be much more similar to 10K training than marathon training, except for
the length of the long day, and to some extent the need for more speed work.

A veteran of several full marathons, Lauri Berger of Mesa, AZ has switched her focus to the
half.

Lauri says, “I just found that with so many other commitments in my life, training for a full
marathon took too much time, and too heavy a toll physically.

“One of the best things about the half marathon is that I don’t feel I lose all of my speed
like I do when training for a marathon, so I still feel comfortable jumping into an occasional
shorter race during my half-marathon training.”

Very few walkers (if any!) are doing it for the money and fame.

Enjoyment is our main motivator, and for some people walking 26.2 miles at a time just isn’
t all that appealing.

Some of us, of course, love marathons, but if 26.2 miles seems a bit daunting, maybe the
half marathon is the distance for you.

Depending on your experience level, training for a half does not have to be much more
time-consuming or difficult than training for a 10K race.

A few modifications, like a slightly longer long day on the weekend and maybe a longer
tempo or speed workout (thankfully, at a somewhat slower pace!) during the week, are
probably all you will need to get yourself ready for a half marathon if you’ve already been
training for 5Ks and 10Ks.

Very new fitness walkers should consider training for these shorter races first, but plenty of
“newbies” have become successful half-marathon walkers right from the start.

Each of the following beginner, 5K to 10K racers, and marathon walkers schedules will get
you ready to complete a half marathon in about 12 weeks.

Dave McGovern is a member of the U.S. National Racewalking Team and the author of The Complete
Guide to Racewalking and The Complete Guide to Marathon Walking. Visit his web site at www.
racewalking.org.