Climbing Mount Impossible...

Half marathon training. 2 weeks down, 13 to go. To paraphrase Dawkins and famous sporting brand, I feel I'm climbing Mount Impossible. At first thought, a half marathon seemed a ridiculous impossible idea, a huge towering rock face of endless running. But, on the other side of the mountain is the gently ascending path of 15 weeks training, the steady climb that will see me (hopefully) conquering the half marathon. Impossible is nothing.

Such is my current attitude to my first attempt to stick to a training programme. My love of all things Nike led me to discover that they have (free) training programmes for varying distances - including the half marathon. It combines running (using the Nike+ running if you have it - if not, why not?!) and a base of conditioning using their incredible Nike Training Club app. I'd already used this a couple of years ago, and loved it. It's a personal trainer on your phone - ready made 15, 30 and 45 minute workouts to help you get lean, toned and strong. Each exercise in the workout has a demonstration video, you can customise the workout, play your music, watch your minutes stack up.... It's great. And it's free. (It's also pretty brutal, I'd seriously recommend sticking to the beginner workouts unless you regularly beast yourself at the gym). And conveniently, it was exactly 15 weeks until Helsinki.

I'm taking it one week at a time, looking ahead too far scares me quite a lot. It's going ok, once I'd got over the crippling week-long DOMS that followed my first workout on day 1 (did I mention that they're pretty brutal?). Stay tuned to see how the rest of the climb goes...