Kelowna, BC
The Wine Country Half is the race readers email me about most. It comes at the end of summer, the course rolls through vineyards, and the finish-line atmosphere is the best in the valley. It’s also 21.1 kilometres on a warm morning with real hills, which is why the most common thing I hear in the last two kilometres is “I should have done more hills.”
This plan is 12 weeks. It assumes you can currently run or run-walk for 30 minutes without stopping. If you can’t yet, spend four weeks on the Mission Creek Greenway building to that first, then start here.
The structure
Three runs a week, one strength session, one long walk or easy bike, two rest days. That’s it. Most people who get injured training for their first half did too many runs, not too few.
- Run 1: Easy. Conversational pace, flat. Greenway or the Rail Trail.
- Run 2: Hills or tempo. Alternating weeks. Knox Mountain for hills; the waterfront loop for tempo.
- Run 3: Long run. Slow. Builds every week except the fourth, which drops back.
- Strength: 40 minutes. Squats, step-ups, single-leg deadlifts, calf raises, planks. Twice a week if you can, once at minimum.
Weeks 1 to 4: build the base
Easy runs of 30 minutes. Hill session: walk up Knox Apex Trail, jog down, twice. Long run starts at 6 kilometres and grows to 10 by week 3. Week 4 you drop the long run to 7 and let the body catch up.
This block feels too easy. That’s correct. If your easy runs are hard, you’re running them too fast. On the Greenway, you should be able to talk in full sentences.
Weeks 5 to 8: add the course
The Wine Country course has long, gradual climbs and a few short sharp ones. Your body needs to have seen both. Hill weeks now mean four to six repeats on a Knox switchback, running up, walking down. Tempo weeks mean 20 minutes at a pace you could hold for an hour, not a pace you could hold for ten minutes.
Long runs go 12, 14, 16, then back to 11. Do at least two of these on rolling terrain. The road along Lakeshore through the Mission and up toward Bertram Creek gives you gentle rollers with the lake beside you. Start at 7 a.m. by August; by 9 it’s already 26 degrees.
Heat and smoke. Race week in Kelowna can be 30 degrees or smoky, and often both. Practise drinking on the run from week 5 onwards. If the AQHI is 7 or above on a long-run day, move to a treadmill and cut the distance by a third. One skipped long run costs you nothing. Running 16 kilometres in smoke costs you a week.
Weeks 9 and 10: the big ones
Long runs of 18 and 19 kilometres. You don’t need to run 21 before race day. You need to run 18 or 19 feeling like you could go on. Keep the hill session but drop to four repeats. Strength stays, but lighter.
This is the block where people get hurt, because they feel fit and start adding things. Don’t. If your calves or shins start to complain, replace one easy run with 45 minutes on a bike along the Rail Trail.
Weeks 11 and 12: taper
Week 11: long run of 12 kilometres, one easy run, one short tempo of 15 minutes. Week 12: two easy 25-minute runs early in the week, then nothing but walking for the last three days. You will feel sluggish and worried. Everyone does.
Fuel and gear
Nothing fancy. For runs over 75 minutes, take a gel or a banana at the 45-minute mark and practise it, because a stomach that has never seen a gel at kilometre 14 will let you know. Shoes: whatever you’ve done your long runs in, with at least 100 kilometres on them and no more than 600. Buy them at a local running store where someone watches you run before selling you anything; two of the shops downtown do this well. A hat and sunglasses matter more here than in Vancouver. The sun on the vineyard roads is direct and there is very little shade after 8 a.m.
If you miss a week
You will. A cold, a work trip, a smoky stretch. Don’t try to make it up by doubling the next week. Pick up the plan where the calendar says you should be, not where you left off, and drop the long run by a couple of kilometres. One missed week in twelve changes nothing. Two doubled weeks in a row is how you arrive at the start line hurt.
Race morning in Kelowna
Eat what you’ve eaten before every long run. Nothing new. Arrive early; parking around the start is worse than you expect. Start slower than feels right, because the first kilometres are downhill and adrenaline is a liar. Take water at every station from the first one. The climbs come in the middle third. You’ve run Knox eleven times by now; these are smaller.
After
Walk the next day. Greenway, 30 minutes, flat. Then take a week off running entirely and let your body tell you what it thinks. If you enjoyed it, the Okanagan Marathon is in October and you’ve already done most of the work.
You don’t need to run 21 before race day. You need to run 18 feeling like you could go on.
If you’d rather have this written out week by week with your actual schedule, that’s what the Okanagan Strong and Trail Ready PDFs are for. Otherwise, print this, stick it on the fridge, and start Monday.
Want this turned into a plan?
Programs are PDFs you can start today. From $69 CAD.