Sub-2 Half Marathon Without a Single Run Over 10 Miles
Getting fast on 5 hours a week
Dante ran his first half marathon last year.
I was keeping an eye on him from afar.
He ramped up, ran the race, posted a picture smiling after.
It looked good.
Then 6 months later I saw his training data.
“Oh no…”
He had thrown his name into the lottery for a 50 mile overnight ultra, thought he’d never get picked, and forgot about it.
Then he got an email, started pacing in his living room, and texted me.
“Dude. I got a ticket to Survive The Night.
How do I run 50 miles??
The race is in 8 weeks…”
Our plan for the 50 followed everything I’ve been sharing in prior articles:
2 to 3 hour time on feet sessions
run/walk strategies
practicing fueling in training
increasing volume without crushing him
But this post isn’t about that.
This post is about what I saw in his prior half marathon training.
And how our approach brought him down from 2:08 to 1:56, and feeling like this on race day:
The Scramble to Train the Distance
The first thing I did when I got into Dante’s training was look back at the build toward his half marathon in April 2025.
And I saw what I see every single self-trained beginner runner do.
Running 2 to 4 times per week
Most runs 2 to 6 miles
Then within a month of Race Day, runs get closer to race distance
And it can get you there. He finished.
But when I dug into each of these sessions, I saw the same thing over and over:
10:30 to 12 min/mile pace
No clear structure in each run
The long runs had too much walking
We tried something different.
And it shaved 12 minutes off his race.
The Distance Is Never the Problem
I had another athlete training for his first half marathon earlier this year.
During his build, he asked a question I get often:
“Should I run 13.1 miles before the race??”
Sometimes this can be a mental unlock. But it’s never how the beginner builds fitness.
For Dante, we focused on two things:
Get faster at shorter stuff
Make the longer stuff easier
That’s it.
Here’s exactly what this looked like.
Self Trained:
This is very common for the first timer.
get a date on the calendar
any running is more than you were doing, so you start at 1-2 runs per week
a month out you add some longer stuff
you run the race
Good. Now do it better.
50 Mile Build:
Dante wanted to explore endurance in general, and did a good job getting a local sprint tri on the calendar.
This set him up to do three things:
build endurance
become well rounded
stay healthy doing more
He even threw in his own marathon around NYC to get the mental unlock of hitting that distance in prep of running 50.
I didn’t put it on the plan. But I liked the strategy and was happy to see him go get what he knew he needed.
(I got on his ass to ride the bike the next day - and not sit around staying sore).
The 1 Mile Speed Block:
In the past 6+ years of coaching athletes, this has become a classic 7 week block that guarantees speed gains.
It’s the most actionable thing you can implement to your plan - TODAY - no matter what distance you’re working towards.
And the best part? You don’t need to worry about training zones or Heart Rate or any of that crap.
Just do this. It’s exactly how Dante went from an 8:01 to 6:35.
