6 Week Half Marathon Training Schedule

The Brutal Truth About 6 Weeks to Run 13.1 Miles

A six week half marathon training schedule only works if you can already run roughly 8-10 miles without stopping. I see people sign up for these every single race season and then they're dragging themselves across the finish line because they tried to build fitness from zero. The schedule itself isn't hard. What's hard is the reality of fitting three to four quality runs into your actual life while also working a job and paying rent. Here is how I structured my most recent one, and more importantly where most people go wrong.

6 Week Half Marathon Training Schedule

Week One Through Two: Just Show Up

The first two weeks are completely unglamorous. You are building aerobic base and convincing your feet that this is actually a thing you want to do for eight straight weeks. Week one looks like this:

• Monday: 3.5 miles easy. Talk pace. You should be able to hold a full conversation without gasping.
• Tuesday: 3 miles with six 45-second strides at the end. Not sprints. Just quickening the turnover for a few strides and then backing off.
• Wednesday: Rest or 20 minutes cross-training.
• Thursday: 4 miles easy.
• Friday: Rest.
• Saturday: 5 to 6 miles. This is your long run. Same easy pace.
• Sunday: Rest or a light walk.

Week two adds about ten to fifteen percent volume. Your Saturday long run goes to 6.5 or 7 miles. Nothing fancy. Your legs will feel heavy by Wednesday and that is completely normal. Do not try to speed things up to make up for the heaviness. Just run slower and run it out. This is where people either click or quit. The weekly volume peaks here and the quality work starts to matter. Week three introduces tempo work. Your schedule should look something like:

• Monday: 4 miles easy
• Tuesday: 4 miles with four 6-minute tempo segments at "comfortably hard" effort. This is the pace you could hold for roughly an hour in a race. Not sprinting. Just solid.
• Wednesday: Rest or easy cross-training
• Thursday: 4.5 miles easy
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: 8 miles long run. Easy pace. Yes, it will feel slower than your Tuesday tempo. That is the point.
• Sunday: Rest

Week four is a cutback week. Volume drops by about thirty percent. This is not optional. If you skip the cutback, your week five adaptation stalls and you will be carrying accumulated fatigue into your key workout. I learned this the hard way when I had a stress reaction in my right tibia during a previous six week block. I was not taking a recovery week. The fix was immediate rest for nine days, then rebuilding from three mile easy runs. It set me back two full weeks. Not worth it. This is your hardest week. Your long run hits 9 to 10 miles. You will have one intensity session and one tempo session. Everything else is easy recovery mileage. Most beginners treat the long run as a speed workout. It is not. It is a time-on-feet endurance builder. If you are running the long run at tempo pace, you are undermining the entire week.

Week six is short. That is the whole idea. You are shedding fatigue so your body can express the fitness you built over the previous five weeks. If your race is on Sunday, shift everything one day later. The final two miles on Thursday are your last meaningful workout. After that, just stay loose. The biggest problem with a six week schedule is that it leaves almost no margin for illness, travel, or life happening. A cold ruins week three. A work trip knocks out two midweek runs. You fall behind and then you are either running broken workouts or skipping them entirely. I once had to swap my Saturday long run to Sunday because of a family event, which messed up my Monday recovery and made my Tuesday tempo session feel like a war. The workaround was simple: I moved the tempo to Wednesday instead and ran Monday as complete rest. It kept the week balanced without doubling up on hard days.

Another thing people miss is nutrition timing. On long run days, you need to practice taking in carbohydrates during the run. Thirty to forty-five grams of carbs per hour starting around mile four. Most runners who hit the wall at mile eleven did not train their gut. They can handle more than they think if they practice it. Gels, chews, sports drink. Pick one and stick with it on your long runs. Your stomach does not care about variety on race day. Footwear matters more in a six week block than a twelve week one. You will not have time to break in new shoes gradually. Wear the same pair you have already logged at least thirty miles in. If you try new shoes during week five, you are rolling the dice with blisters and hot spots. I replaced a pair at mile forty-five and spent week six dealing with a blister on my left heel that made every step unpleasant. The race was fine, but I would have finished noticeably faster without it. If you cannot already run six miles comfortably right now, do not attempt a six week schedule. Eight to ten weeks is a much safer window and it will not meaningfully change the amount of effort you put in during any single week. The extra time is just for gradual accumulation and recovery. Rushing it usually means the difference between a solid race and a painful one.