Ask any first-time half marathon runner what worries them most, and the answer is almost always the same: the number. Twenty-one kilometres sounds like something you need to be worried about, so the whole training plan gets built around surviving it. Long runs get scheduled around it. Rest days get planned keeping that distance in mind. Most of the mental energy goes into that final stretch.
What usually gets ignored is the 10 Km sitting quietly in the middle of that same plan, and that oversight is worth correcting well before race day. Anyone training for the Times Internet Half Marathon would do well to treat that middle distance as seriously as the finish line itself, because the gap between finishing strong and limping through the last five kilometres is rarely decided in the final stretch. It's decided weeks earlier.
