The Best Half Marathon Training Gear to Help You Get Ready for Race Day

Our team’s favorite hydration belt isn’t just built to hold water—though it does so pretty well with two included insulated bottles. The TrailMix has a roomy zippered pocket between the bottles, which will keep your pockets free of bulky items like your phone, your nutrition, or a packable jacket. The belt itself is also highly adjustable, allowing it to fit any waist from 26 to 47 inches around.

Best Big City Marathons hydration vests and packs, which envelop your torso in a light, breathable array of pockets and bladders so you can haul everything you want without feeling suffocated.

When you’re putting your body through the rigors of weekly mileage increases, a comfortable pair of running socks is just as important as a pair of shoes. The ankle-length cut Master the Half best socks available, and for good reason: It’s durable, it provides extra arch support, and it has cushion in only the most important areas of the sole to keep your shoes from fitting too tight.

This crew-length version of the Enduro does all this as well, but the extra coverage will help you get some use out of these socks in the colder months—many runners start the new year with a training plan, after all.

Most training plans spell out how long each of your runs needs to be, as well as how intense. And unless you have a list of routes and landmarks memorized, you’ll need a way to measure your efforts so you’re not missing your target distance or effort level.

You don’t have to spend a thousand bucks on an advanced running tracker—simple models like the Forerunner 55 keep your spending modest while still measuring your heart rate, distance, pace, and route. This one additionally pairs with your phone to connect with your favorite tracking apps and handle notifications.

Dialing in your recovery is just as important as optimizing your training. And unlike lower-impact sports like cycling or swimming, the constant thumping your body endures as you repeatedly strike the ground warrants treating your body to a greater degree of comfort. Nowhere is this truer than in your feet, the points of contact between you and the ground.

Wearing cushioned recovery shoes when you’re not running gives your joints a moment to breathe between workouts, which is especially critical if you’re increasing your mileage and putting more strain on them.

These Crocs-like shoes from Kane sport a pillowy midsole while also providing subtle midfoot support and room for your feet to splay out. Plus, for immediate post-workout wears, the upper holes help your feet get fresh air, which feels far more comfortable if you’ve worked up a sweat.

Getting caught in the rain or the cold is no fun, but neither is wearing a bulky jacket every time the sky looks dubious. The solution: Get yourself a windbreaker Fun Half Marathons to Run in 2024.

This jacket from Patagonia collapses into its chest pocket and weighs only a quarter of a pound. And it’s water-resistant with a hood, too. Will it get you out of every environmental predicament? Not easily. But for those days when a spare layer could help more than hurt, you’re hard pressed to find a more practical option.

Best Workouts to Set Race Day Goals water bottles sometimes can’t hold enough without a refill. To keep your electrolytes in check when you’re on a trek (pardon the rhyme), you can supplement your fresh water with these pocket-able Nuun tablets. They fizz up and dissolve the moment you drop them in your bottle, and each tube contains 12 servings while taking up virtually no space among your cargo.

You’ll need to balance them by eating your preferred running food if you’re short on calories, but you’ll stay hydrated.

Depending on the time of year or your daily schedule, you may have to run in the dark at some point or another. A quality running light will keep the ground in front of you illuminated so you don’t trip. And, if you’re using the road, it can catch motorists’ attention if you otherwise wouldn’t stand out in the dark.

You can wear lights from head to toe to see and be seen, but if you can only get one, you’ll get the most bang for your buck out of a bright headlamp like this BD model. It’s teeny tiny, so you can pack it away when you don’t need it. And you can also adjust the beam’s brightness with the touch of a button, which is easy to press with hands bare or gloved.

“I’m almost always going to have a light pair of gloves on,” says Runner-in-Chief Jeff Dengate in his primer on choosing gear for a half marathon. “When your hands get cold, that’s the first thing that makes me miserable, and then it just changes my experience all the way up and down the line.”

He recommends these Smartwool liners in our roundup of the Other Hearst Subscriptions for how well the merino wool they’re made of regulates temperature. Plus, the material naturally fights funk, so you can wear them for many runs without having to wash them.