Who is it for?
You are a committed runner who has been running regularly for a couple of years. You have completed a few races and have an idea of your different paces for 5km, 10km and Half Marathon (HM). You know you can complete the HM distance but you are looking at a more structured approach to training to improve on your time. You are currently running a minimum of 3 times a week with a weekly mileage of at least 25km. You are committed to running four times per week for the duration of this plan.

How is the plan structured?
There are 3 blocks of training within the 12 weeks.
Block One (Weeks 1 to 5) will build your overall mileage from 32 km to 42km per week and increase your long run from 12 km to 16km. Your four weekly runs will be a short easy run, a speed session (intervals or hills), a tempo session to build endurance and a long easy run. The aim of the block is to build a strong all round base to prepare you for the next block.
Week 6 is a recovery week with easier sessions and reduced mileage.
Block Two (Weeks 7 to 10) will build your overall weekly mileage to 50km and your long run to 19km. The training will become more specific to your event, with less speed work and more endurance. The tempo efforts get longer and there will some faster finishes to your long runs to really work on finishing strong.
Block Three (Weeks 11 and 12) will focus on the all important taper. The workload will reduce to roll back the fatigue and reveal the fitness underneath.

The length of the runs are for distance but the majority of the intervals within the run are for duration. Pace is based on RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) For example a session might be:- Run 10km including 4 x 5 minutes at RPE 8, with 2 minutes jog recoveries.

The RPE scale is as follows:-
RPE 5: Easy, you should be able to hold a conversation throughout
RPE 6: Steady, you should still be able to talk, though not as much!
RPE 7: Race Pace. This is the slower end of your tempo pace, talking is much reduced.
RPE 8: Tempo/Threshold Pace. This is the pace you could maintain for an hour in a race, so somewhere around your 10km pace (or a bit slower if you can run a 10km faster than an hour). It's comfortably hard, you want to stop but if you really had to you could keep going. You can talk in very short sentences.
RPE 9: This is tough, your heart should be racing and you should be very breathless at the end of the interval.
RPE 10: Full on sprint, the zombies are coming and you need to run! (We don't use this pace often!)

This plan is written by one of the all female coaching team of the global coaching community for women, Girls Run the World. https://girlsruntheworld.co.uk

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