Half Marathon Tips Needed! PS hi all :)

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Hello everyone, new guy here.

I'm not new to the running game, but I'm needing a bit of advice from the more experienced.
I currently run anywhere between 5-12k 3 or 4 times a week. This is a routine that I've taken up after running a marathon in October 2012 and it's getting a bit stagnant for me.. even though i try to mix it up and keep my body guessing with cross training and yoga.

Point is.. I'm thinking of entering in a Half Marathon series which begins on the 4th May. With my current activity level, is there an intermediate/advanced type schedule anyone can recommend to me (about 6-7 weeks) to get myself ready for it in under 2 hours? I'm fairly confident I could adapt the middle bits of my marathon training schedule but being that I'll be entering in a 5 half marathon series taking place about 1 per month beginning with may, I'll also need to sustain the distances.

Haaaaaalp :)

Thank you!
 
I know this is awkward but please give as much detail regarding yourself, what you do, and what you have available to do as possible.
I am a has been marathon runner, but a bit on the heavy side for that now. It means I have a lot of old school knowledge on this that others more up to date will likely improve on.
Intervals are great for improving pace and I assume this is a key aim by the under 2 hours part.
I am using a butchered version of Timmons and find it helps me a great deal. Timmons is 20 seconds fast, 2 minutes recovery, there is a % VO2 max guideline but I don't have that kind of kit available to me so I just go flat out for 20 seconds and recover in the next 2 minutes. This is supposed to be 3 times in a work out 3 times a week. I do once a week 10 times in one session.
There are various types of interval training distance and time based that are worth considering.
You are varying your distance which is good, but I would say you need to get in some longer runs as part of your regime because you are aiming for a 13+ mile event with training that doesn't get close to this distance. Not knowing how you will feel further in will mean you either run slower reserving energy for later, which damages your time, or go too fast and burn out. In the early stages this will mean having to do longer runs at a lower pace, unless you are a plodder like me. This will mean you do some disappointing runs then gradually increase your pace over the whole thing. you want to be doing at lease occasional runs at 10 miles plus before going in for a half marathon.
You are doing other stuff outside the running so I am not going into that until I know what this consists of in more detail. This is just about the running and when considering distance work, most of your training will be out pounding the tarmac in different ways.
 
As some general advice from someone who runs half-marathons, I can offer this information...

I actually think it's a good thing that you're running lower distances than the 21K you'll be racing at. The newest school of thought is that, unless you're a high-performance runner in very competitive levels of racing, you should seldom actually be training at your racing distance. 21 kilometers is a lot of mileage, regardless of experience, and frequent running at that length can be damaging to your body's integrity. At most, I would work up to training at the full length once every one or two weeks.

I would also replace some of the other running days with resistance training. A lot of runners disregard weight lifting as being a necessary component to their training, because the thought is that running means you don't want to be bulky. You're not going to "bulk up" accidentally, though. What you're going to do is build the necessary strength that your muscles need to be able to endure repetitive contraction and impact over a couple hours. You also need to train your muscles' explosiveness. While long-distance running isn't as much of an explosive, power sport as sprinting is, each time your foot is leaving the ground is a small-power contraction (power as opposed to the contractions in slow strength movements), and so you should be supplementing your training with exercises that will train that system. (Bounds, box jumps, maybe even Olympic lifting.)

As for the rest of the days you run, have a good mix of shorter distance, slow-paced runs (10-15K) and much shorter, higher-paced intervals runs (6-10K with sprinting intervals).
 
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