While I was training for my first half marathon during the summer of 2025, I’d clock an average 16:00 run/walk pace. I wanted to go faster, but I wasn’t physically prepared to accomplish a quicker pace. So I followed the Runner’s World Beginner Run/Walk plan and racked up miles.
By focusing on consistency and going longer, I worked up to an average 13:51 pace come race day. But I still wanted to pick it up. I signed up for another race last spring, following the Runner’s World break 2:30 plan, which introduced me to some speed workouts: half marathon pace sessions scheduled every week.
I struggled to keep up with those runs, sometimes falling off pace during sessions and other times skipping them entirely. The quicker pace felt intimidating and I typically dreaded the workouts. But I couldn’t deny they led to improvement in my next half, as I finished in 2:48:54, a more than 10-minute PR.
Chasing after the same goal and with my eye on the Copenhagen Half Marathon, I jumped at a chance to train with Runna, an app that creates personalized training plans that adjust to your schedule. After answering a few prompts, like estimated finish time and how many days a week to run, the app initially spit out a training plan with rolling 800s in the first week. Thinking back to my previous speedwork experience, I felt too nervous to commit.
I scrapped the plan and retook the survey hoping I’d get one with less speedwork. After several tries, I finally got a program with speed sessions every other week—a good compromise for my goal of getting faster without dreading my runs. As a run/walker, tackling speed was challenging because I had to factor in how long I could run before walking, and it didn’t always align with the length of the running interval, which made the workouts feel out of reach.
But I figured out a way to harness the power of the run/walk method and got into a biweekly groove of zeroing in on faster paces. It led me to a 2:38:03 finish, cutting another 10 minutes off my previous time. Here’s how I overcame my fears of regular speedwork and the strategies you can steal to do the same.
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