What is a good half marathon training program for someone extremely out of shape.?

In order to encourage me to lose weight, I promised myself I'd do a mini marathon that is 7 months away. I am very out of shape and have tried to start running but my runs have been cut short due to shin splints. What is a good training program to use in order to finish. I'm not worried so much about my time as I am finishing.|||I was really out of shape and every time I tried to get in shape some injury would pop up because I probably tried to do too much too fast. What got me over the hump was this walk a marathon plan that has you doing the following for 4 weeks: Walk a Marathon in a Month:


Week 1 4 walks 30 min 16:30 min/mile


Week 2 5 walks 40 min 15:00 min/mile


Week 3 5 walks 50 min 14:00 min/mile


Week 4 6 walks 60 min


The idea is that in the last week you walk 26.2 miles (a marathon) or 4.37 miles a day. They give some guidelines about how fast you should be walking but the important thing, I think, is to walk the distance, not how long it takes you. After the 4 weeks you can try jogging at a bit faster pace than the walks. You may cut back on the days (but no less than 4 days) and the time jogging (but not less than a half hour) when you start but keep one day at an hour and increase it 5 minutes every week until you get to two hours. At that point you should be able to run a half marathon. Whether you reach your weight goals will depend on your diet which is 80% of the battle. Running burns 100 calories a mile and there are 3500 calories in pound of fat, thus 35 miles running is equivalent to losing a pound.|||well it would probably be easier to answer if you say how out of shape you are and what your current runs are, but if I assume you are a total beginner (which is easiest for me)


I would suggest starting with a couch to 5k plan





http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/鈥?/a>





if you are a little higher than that level you can start somewhere in the middle or skip it and start with a half marathon program





http://running.about.com/od/racetraining鈥?/a>





this one seemed good for a lower level, i would suggest that since you have so much time before your half-marathon you double up on some of weeks to more thoroughly prepare yourself