All you need to be able to do is 7 km! If you are able to finish 7 kilometers comfortably, then you can finish a marathon which is just over six segments of 7 km each.

Most marathons have a finish time of five hours. That leaves you with 49 minutes for every segment of 7 kilometers. Now the important part is to see if you can keep the pace as many people slow down in the second half of a marathon. that could be a minute slower for every kilometer depending on your fitness.

So the aim would be to not use much more than 45 minutes for every section of 7 kilometers for the first half of the race.

So how do you start …. start walking every day for 20 minutes at least (no recent activity). Increase this gradually to 45 minutes – see how far you get in the 45 minutes. The next step is to start running part of this 45 minutes – 1 minute run and 4 minutes walk. As you get fitter, you change this so that later you could run 4 minutes and walk 1 minute. See how far do you get in the 45 minutes. If you do 7 kimolmeters, that is great. If not, run for 5 minutes and walk 1 and so on until you get to you pace.

Then you also need to start doing the longer runs/walks. You would start with a 60 minute run/walk and increase this every week or two by 20 minutes. You do this until you can stay on your feet for at least four hours. Listen to your body in the process. When you go out remember to take regular walk breaks – say 2 minutes our of every 8 minutes. Do not speed now.

Of course the best way is to have a coach or friend that you could give feedback to and that you can test your prograrm with. The most important thing in the whole process is to listen to your body – you do not want an injury at all during the training and you also do not want to be ill during your preparation.

So get started and get walking!