No. 11 · 19 Oct 2024 · 7 min
How to prepare for the half-marathon with product-approach?
How to break down you preparation based on your vision and strategy.
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Let’s go!
Hey,
I finally broke my personal best in the half-marathon, finishing with a time of 1:25:48. It took a long time to reach this milestone, but today I want to reflect on the journey from a product perspective. In many ways, your sports goal is your product, and the key question becomes: How do you set the right milestones to get there?
The great thing about being a Product Manager or Product Owner is that you can apply those skills to other areas of your life—or vice versa. If you understand how to structure a training process, you can use the same principles in product management. This post series will explore how to approach half-marathon preparation with a product mindset.
What’s inside?
Finding the answer for: Why?
How do evaluate you your current shape?
Set milestones
Create Training Plan
Adjust Process
Run your Half-Marathon
Half-Marathon Funnel ⚡️
Every training process should start with an evaluation of your current form and, of course, the right question: why?
Why am I doing this? You may have multiple answers in mind, but to achieve your goal, your reason must be clear. There could be various motivations, but having a well-defined why makes it easier to set milestones and choose the right strategy to reach your goal.
What do you think? Will completing a half-marathon without a target time require the same strategy as completing it with a target time? In some ways, both paths will require consistency to achieve the goal. However, the load, performance metrics, and pacing strategies should be completely different depending on your specific target.
For me, it looks like:
You should evaluate your starting point, and shape and answer the question why.
Let’s take my example.
I have been in sport since 11 years old. My first sport canoe rowing, and in the last 4 years I’ve been doing running and other activities. My past results for the half-marathon were:
2020:
1:28:47 Pace: 4:13/km
2022
1:28:22 Pace 4:12/km
2023
1:28:38 Pace 4:12/km
Based on my past results plus considering that I have a Bachelor's degree in Sports and have solid amateur experience. I can listen to my body, react and adjust my training plans, and also know how to build training blocks.
Why?
I want to break my personal best and break the 28 minutes. Once again, why? You would be surprised, I have no clue, but I just want it. For me the reason is clear.
How do you evaluate your current shape?
You should ask questions and get answers.
Honestly, you could create a simple form with Yes/No answers and check the results afterward.
Have you done any sport in the past?
Are you doing any sport now?
If yes, how many times per week?
Do you train regularly?
Did you do running training before?
Have you ever run a Half-Marathon?
Do you have any health issues?
When you get answers to those questions, you at least will get some information about your current shape if didn’t know it before. Maybe you’ll be surprised with the answers. 😅
Set milestones 🎯
What would you like to achieve? It’s part of the question, why? In my case, it was obvious. I want to break 1:28 in the Half-Marathon distance. From this point, I have to do good research and create my training plan (roadmap) to achieve this goal.
When you already understand what you would like to achieve, you should find your race. If you’re living in a city where regularly happens running events, I would suggest finding a local race.
It’s cheaper
You don’t need to go somewhere
You could get more support from your relatives or friends.
Tools:
RaceCheck - here you can read reviews for different races across the world
Ahotu - the most popular resource to find your race.
Create Training Plan
This section actually includes quite a lot because at this point you should create your Roadmap and use appropriate tools and technologies to simplify to path to your goal. Well, let’s be honest, we can speak all of this, just wear your shoes and run a half-marathon even today without any preparation, fancy running shoes and wearables that track your HR and performance.
What do we need in an ideal world:
Running apparel. Quality apparel matters. You can find different options on the market. Why? It’s more comfortable than casual clothes from your wardrobe.
Running shoes. If you seriously want to find a good pair, then to go a local shop and find a place where a consultant could help you. Usually, they can analyze your foot and suggest appropriate options. If you want to save time, you could try to use the application: https://neatsy.ai/
I could say, that when I tried it, it perfectly confirmed that my ideal shoes are: Saucony Triumph
Running watch. Here you can find different options as well, from Garmin, Polar, Suunto, and Apple Watch to any other devices that can track your runs and heart rate.
Training process. This is the most interesting part because you can go with different options based on your experience, time, and budget.
You can join your running local club (with a coach) and train with the group. Usually, it requires a yearly fee.
You can find a personal trainer and will get a personal approach based on your goals, schedule, and current form.
You can try to learn from open sources like YouTube, and influencers and use mobile applications that could prepare your training plan based on your goal and will guide you through this journey.
I can recommend tools I’ve used by myself and find them useful.
Training platforms.
Biomechanics Analysis
OCHY - Running Form & Gait Analysis through video
We have a case study about Running Form Analysis.
When you set up your gear and training plan, you can start following the plan step by step.
Adjust Process 📝
Each plan sometimes requires changes. It might depend on your goals, milestones, injuries, or illness. What does it mean? If you feel at some point that plan is too hard please have a rest. If you feel uncomfortable during your training, decrease intensity and load. If you missed training, don’t try to do more the next day, nothing critical happened. First of all, you have to remember that it’s about having fun and enjoying the process. If you’re not enjoying it, maybe you could find another activity. 😉
Run your HM 🏎
It’s finally your race day. You followed your plan and now you just need to enjoy your day. It might be different emotions. It depends on the race and your attitude to this day. What I’m usually trying to do is just relax and trust my body to do the work. 🙂
A note from Author ✍️
Running a race it’s always an adventure. Looking at my current experience I would say that you should keep in mind several things during your training process.
Don’t evaluate your form during your training. One day you might be fast, another a bit tired and don’t see any progress.
Results aren’t linear. One day you can set your personal best effortlessly, another day show your worst result.
What I’ve learned so far, is that always consistency makes an impact and brings results. It doesn’t matter in which area. It always works.
P.S.
See you,
Taras
Help us to become better with one question.
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