From 150 to 135 What Really Changed in My Half Marathon Training

My first half marathon was 1:50 at university, and I made almost every fuelling mistake possible.

I did not carb load. I did not take gels. I did not drink water. I walked the last 3 miles wondering why my legs had completely disappeared.

At the time, I thought I had just “hit the wall” because I was not fit enough. Looking back, that race was the start of everything. It pushed me towards an MSc in sports nutrition, because I wanted to understand why effort and outcome can feel so disconnected.

Since then, I have run 1:37, then 1:35. The biggest change was not that I suddenly became tougher, more disciplined, or better at suffering.

I started training with more strategy.

More sessions stop working when the basics are already there

At the beginner stage, consistency changes everything. Run regularly, build gradually, and you improve. That is the beauty of being new to the half marathon.

At the intermediate stage, the same approach starts to stall.

You can add another run. You can squeeze in another gym session. You can make every run a bit harder because “moderate” feels productive. For a while, it works. Then the body stops adapting. You feel tired but not fitter. Your race pace does not shift much. Your long runs take more out of you than they should.

That was the gap between my first half marathon and the later ones.

Consistency got me from not knowing what I was doing to being a runner. Strategy got me from 1:50 to 1:35.

That strategy came down to three things:

• Training at the right intensity

• Fuelling enough to actually complete the work

• Recovering like adaptation mattered

  
  

Because it does.

The 80 20 principle changed how I trained

Most intermediate runners know they should not race every run. The problem is that many still train in the middle.

Not easy enough to recover.

Not hard enough to create a clear speed stimulus.

Just tiring enough to make the next session worse.

The 80/20 principle is simple in theory. Around 80% of running should feel genuinely easy, with around 20% being harder, more structured work. The exact split does not need to be perfect, but the idea matters.

Most intermediate runners do the opposite. Every run becomes “steady”. Every easy run creeps up. Every long run turns into a test. Then intervals get slower, recovery gets shorter, and race day feels like a grind.

Easy should feel almost too easy

Easy running is not failed hard running. It has a job.

An easy run should usually feel like:

• Zone 2 effort

• Full conversation pace

• Controlled breathing

• A run you could repeat later if you had to

• A session that leaves you better, not flattened

  
  

Most women I speak to are not running their easy runs easy enough. Often, they are carrying fatigue, under-fuelling, and trying to fit training around work, family, study, or a full day on their feet. The pace that looks “easy” on paper may not be easy in the body.

That distinction matters.

If your easy days are too hard, your hard days suffer. If your hard days suffer, the plan looks good on paper but does not deliver.

Hard sessions should be precise, not heroic

This was a big shift for me.

I used to think a good interval session meant going faster than the target. If the plan said 4:30/km pace and I ran 4:20/km, that felt like a win.

It was not always a win.

If you run the first few reps at 110%, blow up, then crawl through the final reps, you have not outperformed the session. You have changed it. You have added fatigue without getting the full benefit.

Getting all 12 reps done at 80% of your maximum, with clean form and consistent pacing, often beats smashing the first half and surviving the rest.

The aim of intervals is not to prove fitness every week. The aim is to build it.

That means:

• Hit the set pace, not 10 seconds faster

• Keep recoveries honest

• Finish feeling like you trained, not like you raced

• Repeat the quality week after week

  
  

There is a quiet confidence in finishing a session knowing you could have done one more rep. That feeling used to frustrate me. Now I see it as a sign the session did what it needed to do.

The long run is not a weekly race

The long run has a huge role in half marathon training, but it often gets turned into a performance check.

Most long runs should be mostly easy.

They build time on feet. They improve your ability to use fat as a fuel source. They teach you to run when the legs are tired. They also give you a chance to practise fuelling before race day, which is where many half marathon plans fall apart.

There is a place for race pace work in long runs, especially later in a block. But that does not mean every Sunday needs to become a confidence test.

When I improved, my long runs became more controlled. I stopped chasing a pace that looked impressive on Strava. I started caring more about the purpose of the run.

Could I finish strong?

Could I fuel consistently?

Could I recover well enough to train properly two days later?

Those questions mattered more than whether the average pace looked exciting.

Fuelling was the biggest missing piece

My first half marathon nutrition plan was basically hope.

No carb load. No gels. No water. Then confusion when my body ran out of usable energy.

Now I think about fuelling as part of the training, not an extra detail.

For harder sessions and long runs, useful starting points are:

Timing	Carbohydrate target
30 to 90 minutes before a session	30 to 60g carbohydrate
During runs over 75 minutes	30 to 60g carbohydrate per hour
Advanced race fuelling in some elite settings	Up to 120g carbohydrate per hour

Research in elite female half marathon runners has suggested that 120g of carbohydrate per hour can be optimal in that context. That does not mean every runner should jump straight to that amount. Gut training matters. Body size, pace, tolerance, and race duration all matter.

But it does show how far away many runners are from fuelling enough.

A lot of women are taking one gel for a 2-hour run and wondering why the final 30 minutes feel awful. One gel might be 20 to 25g carbohydrate. For many runners, that is not close to enough.

This is informational only and should not replace personalised medical or dietetic advice, especially if you have a health condition, a history of disordered eating, or specific nutrition needs.

Your 6pm session starts at breakfast

This is the battery analogy I use all the time.

If you have an interval session at 6pm, that session does not start when your watch starts. It starts at breakfast.

If you under-eat through the day, skip lunch, have a coffee, then grab a small snack at 5pm, you are not starting the session at 100%. You are arriving on 40% charge and asking your body to perform like it is full.

Then the session feels harder than it should. Pace feels forced. Recovery drags. Cravings hit later. Sleep may be worse.

Fuelling is not just about the hour before training. It is the whole day.

That was a huge part of what really changed in my half marathon training. I stopped seeing food as something to earn after a run. I started seeing it as the reason I could train well in the first place.

Protein and sleep make the training stick

Carbohydrate gets a lot of attention for running performance, and rightly so. But protein and sleep are where the adaptation often happens.

For runners in heavier training blocks, a common evidence-based protein range is 1.6 to 2.2g per kg of body weight per day. The simple part is spreading it across the day.

A useful target is 25 to 35g protein per meal, adjusted for body size and total needs.

Post-run nutrition does not need to be complicated. It could be:

• Greek yoghurt, cereal, and fruit

• Eggs on toast

• A smoothie with milk, banana, oats, and protein powder

• Tofu or chicken with rice and vegetables

• A bagel with peanut butter and a milky coffee

  
  

The aim is not perfection. The aim is giving the body enough material to repair.

Sleep is when the work turns into fitness

Training creates the signal. Recovery creates the adaptation.

That sounds obvious, but it is easy to behave as if the session is the whole story. You finish the run, tick the box, and move on. Yet the body still has to absorb that work.

Sleep is part of that process.

In heavy training blocks, a pre-sleep snack can matter, especially if dinner was light or training was late. Going to bed in a deficit increases the risk that the body breaks down tissue overnight instead of repairing well.

That snack does not need to be dramatic. It might be yoghurt and granola, toast and peanut butter, cereal and milk, or a smoothie. The point is to avoid asking your body to rebuild with no supplies.

Five questions to ask before your next half marathon block

Before starting another plan, I would ask these questions honestly.

1. Are my easy runs actually easy?

   If you cannot hold a full conversation, they may be too hard.

   
   

2. Am I doing too much in the middle?

   If every run feels “comfortably hard”, your plan may lack contrast.

   
   

3. Do I fuel before and during key sessions?

   If you regularly fade late in long runs, look at carbohydrate first.

   
   

4. Am I spreading protein across the day?

   One high-protein dinner does not make up for low intake all day.

   
   

5. Does my recovery match my training load?

   If sleep, food, and rest are poor, adding more training is rarely the answer.

   
   

These questions are not glamorous. They are also the kind of questions that take a runner from stuck to progressing again.

What really changed

The difference between 1:50, 1:37, and 1:35 was not one magic session.

It was learning how to train at the right intensity. It was learning that easy running has value. It was respecting the pace on interval sessions instead of trying to beat it. It was using long runs to build endurance, not just prove fitness. It was fuelling before I felt desperate. It was eating enough across the day. It was taking recovery seriously.

For runners who want structure around all of this, Fuel Her Fire 2.0 is a 12-week programme built around half marathon training, fuelling, and recovery. It includes RPE calculators, phase-specific nutrition guidance, and bi-weekly check-ins.

The investment is £299, or £249 for WhatsApp community members.

The biggest lesson from my own half marathon progression is simple. At a certain point, doing more is not the answer. Doing the right work, fuelled properly, recovered properly, is what moves the result.