The Half Marathon is a great distance.
Just far enough to really feel accomplished, but short enough where you’re not sidelined for weeks after.
It also allows you to “test” yourself inside of a larger build, taking course over a long time frame.
If you’re a previous athlete and either:
Planning to run a marathon in the not-so-distant future, and want to test your pace in a race setting: the half marathon is perfect for you.
For example, this plan is specified for someone wanting to run a 2-hour half marathon. If you can do that, your *near-future* ability to run a sub-4 hour marathon is within grasp and very doable! You have the foot speed, you just need to up the mileage.
You have no plans for longer distance races, but you still want to test yourself at the half marathon distance due to overall less-taxing nature of the HM.
Both are fine and great ways to increase overall fitness.
As a warning, this plan assumes you have some base level fitness, or have at least have been running enough miles to make the first block (Weeks 1-4) feel natural and a program “warm-up”.
This program would be categorized as an “beginner-intermediate” training plan.