How to realistically train for a half-marathon

I EAT popcorn for dinner and use a stick to turn off my bedroom light. This is how I will run a half-marathon and survive.

Be warned, you will not look like Pamela Anderson after your half-marathon, but you can imagine it. Picture: AKM-GSI

THERE are times in my life where I would watch hours of a TV show I hate because the remote was out of reach. Hi, I’m Rashell and I am about to do a half-marathon.

This Sunday morning I will be running 21km in Australia’s first ever Nike Women’s half-marathon. Why? Because why not. I love to run and wanted to give it a go.

Prepping for a half marathon is a hell of a lot more work than I had anticipated, but here is how I did it without giving up much of my social life and free time.

I have trained three-four times a week for the past 12 weeks. I mixed up running with yoga and circuit training — because let’s face it after a while if you’re not being chased or Messina isn’t giving out free ice-creams then running gets boring.

Crowds did not gather to cheer me on my runs. Just sayin’.

When it comes to what you eat, you don’t have to consume 65 chickens and start downing protein shakes. Nike nutritionist Rosie Mansfield was adamant it wasn’t necessary to carb load before the big day. What she did suggest was to ‘baby carb load’, so you don’t shock your body with too much of something it hasn’t really had to digest in that quantity before.

“If you haven’t had a bowl of pasta in three years then don’t have it the night before” Rosie said.

“Don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do” she said.

The hardest part of training for me, wasn’t the physical aspect of it, but the mental roadblocks I kept building, such as ‘If I am this tired after an 8km run how the hell am I going to make it to 21km?’ Then I spoke to Nike+ Run Club Sydney Head Coach Sam Strutt who gave me a single piece of advice that changed all that, he probably doesn’t know that, so thanks Sam.

‘Just think about what you’re doing in the moment, don’t look beyond that’ he told me when I started complaining about the fact I won’t be able to do 21km. So I stopped thinking about running 21km and started just really putting one foot in front of the other and gunning it.

I got fitter, faster and stronger in comparison to what I was. I am no athlete but this is no fairy-tale: it’s reality and that is what you have to remember. You aren’t going to be the best, but you will be the best version of you out there. Good Luck.