Half-marathon workout: the fitness elevator – Canadian Running Magazine

if you have a Half marathon on this spring’s calendar, you should include a “fitness elevator” workout in your training schedule. A fun twist on a fartlek session, this workout allows you to get faster and faster to practice running on tired legs, a must if you want to finish strong after running 13 miles.

The fitness lift

The purpose of this seven-to-one workout is to progressively increase speed as the intervals get shorter. So you should start the first seven-minute section at about your ideal half-marathon pace, or a little slower. Increase the pace with each subsequent interval so that by the time you get to the two-minute and one-minute sections, you’re moving at about a 5K pace.

The recovery period between each interval should be half the interval that preceded it, so after the seven-minute section you rest 3:30, after the six-minute section you rest 3:00, and so on. Should try to do a very slow jog during your recovery periodsbut as the pace gets faster, you may need to slow down even more to walk.

This is a fairly large workout (the actual part of the workout without warm-up and cool-down should take more than 40 minutes), so it’s more suitable for a more experienced runner. If you are a relative beginner and this is your first halfyou can shorten the workout by starting from the five-minute mark, but make your warm-up and cool-down slightly longer.

The training

Heating: Easy jogging for 10 to 20 minutes, followed by lunges and form exercises

Exercise: 7 min/3:30 break; 6 min/3:00 break; 5 min/2:30 break, 4 min/2:00 break; 3 min/1:30 rest; 2 min/1 min rest; 1 minute

Cool down: 10-20 minutes of easy jogging, followed by light stretching