How I Broke 1:30 in the Half Marathon
And the key workouts I did to help me get there
In 2015, I ran my personal best at the Comox Half Marathon, which was 1:28:15. Back then, I was able to train differently compared to what I do now, due to my current circumstances as well as coming off an illness (late 2022) and injury (2016–2017).
It will be a long time before I break 1:30 again in the half marathon (if ever). The closest I got to 1:30 since my 2016 injury was when I ran 1:33:33 in 2021. I was sure I was on the way back to breaking 1:30 and then I got sick in late 2022. With that in mind, I had to start running from scratch again in early 2023 after I recovered.
I know what it takes for me to be able to get back to breaking 1:30 in the half marathon, but, unfortunately, I’m just not able to train that way at this time.
Here’s what I did leading up to the 2015 race where I broke 1:30 in the half marathon:
- Long runs every other week. Every other week, I did a long run where I ran more than 21km. Typically, my long runs were 25–27km. This gave me the confidence that I could do a half marathon and run a little bit faster. I did the long runs every other week to allow me to recover so I could push harder on the shorter and faster runs during the week.
