10k to half marathon - 4 months - winter nights?

[BikeRunSki]

I used to run a bit before the dc came along, and did my first "event" 10k as the mother of 2 yesterday. It was the Leeds Abbey Dash and I did my best 10k time ever!

I've been toying with the idea of a half marathon. The Sheffield Half is near me and is at the start of April. It would coincide with the 20th anniversary of my dad's death and I would like to do some fundraising for Parkinson's UK.

Can I realistically train for a half marathon in 4 months? 10k time is 1.04.
I work 3 days a week and have a 5 yo and 2 yo. On work days I am out of the house 7am-6pm. On non work days I have the 2 yo all day, but no commute. I belong to a private gym -mainly for the DC's swimming, but could avail myself of their facilities, although I mainly run outside on pavements and bridle ways/ footpaths. I can currently probably find an hour 3 times a week, could make one of them longer. No family locally to look after dd on my non work days.

So - realistically - half marathon training in 4 months, with the rest of crazy life with young children, commute and work squeezed in? Possible ? Madness ? Tips?

I hate the first 2 or 3 miles of a run, but kind of feel that once I have got going I could keep going for 13 miles, although have never actually tried more than 8 k!

Sorry. That last line should read "have never actually tried more than 8 miles.

I don't really KNOW I just like chatting about running , but am sure you could do it very comfortably in that time if you keep running during the week and gradually extend your long run to at least that distance. I didn't do a specific plan but now find 13 miles nice to just run - it's about half my average weekly mileage which is another way of looking at it. The runs don't have to fit into a particular mould of fast long slow or easy or whatever, your body just has to get used to doing them. So if you can do more or less 10k 3x a week and increase your long run by a mile or so at least every couple of weeks (I go up one, two, three back two then up again) that should do it? I run at about your 10k pace and it takes me 2 1/2 hours to do 13 miles (or 2:28 if I am 'racing') - could you arrange that at least most weekends?

advice from the world's slowest and laziest runner

I like your advice Mitchy (and your used name), I was thinking of doing something like that. I wnet from 5K to 10K by running 5 mins longer each week, so think adding a mile every week or so may be the way to go. My work load is erratic, and DH may be away for several nights at short notice, so any kind of proper training plan is likely to go out of the window pretty quickly.

do you like Murakami? His 'what I talk about when I talk about running' is actually really useful in terms of just encouraging you to run when you can, it's quite freeing (but also an interesting book aside from the running chat)

what a lovely way to commemorate your dad's life :)

Never heard of Murakami (illiterate scientist alert), but love the look of that book. Thank you.