MasterChef NZ winner Nadia Lim races for the Heart Foundation!

Published: 30 September 2011

It’s been quite year for super-chef Nadia Lim who’s nailed one huge challenge and is now facing another - training for her first half marathon.

MasterChef New Zealand 2011 Winner, Nadia Lim, has been actively supporting the Heart Foundation since winning the second local series of ‘MasterChef NZ’ in May, 2011.

Shortly after claiming her Masterchef NZ crown, Nadia wrote a series of recipes for the Heart Foundation’s new website. The Auckland dietitian was thrilled with the opportunity to combine her impressive culinary skills with her professional interest in public health and well-being.

Now, Nadia is taking on a challenge well beyond her comfort zone. Come October, Nadia will run her first half marathon to raise funds for the Heart Foundation.   
Nadia has teamed up Brett McGregor, Masterchef NZ’s 2010 winner and Brett’s wife, Tracey. Together the three novice half marathon runners have formed ‘Team Masterchef’ and will run the 21km half marathon course at the adidas Auckland Marathon on October 30th.

It’s a big challenge but they’re training hard. And they’ve got some tough competition – TVNZ’s Breakfast team has joined the Heart Racer fundraising challenge. So it’s Team Masterchef v Team Breakfast!

Here is Nadia's first blog update on how training is going:

I went for my first run 3 weeks ago and managed to run 3kms non-stop, but I was very sore the next day!

I'm not a seasoned runner so its been hard getting into the habit. The week after that Carlos came along with me to keep me motivated (and it was a good push for him to start exercising after all the food I've been feeding him from the recipe testing I've been doing for the book!).

Having someone to run with made a huge difference because I was trying to keep up with him and didn't want to lag behind. We managed to do 5kms, then 6kms a few days later. Now I'm up to comfortably running 8kms....still a loooooong way to go for a half marathon!

I like running and then doing a bit of walking in between as I don't want to risk getting an injury. I know its an adage excuse, but it's been hard finding the time to fit in the runs. With writing the cookbook, numerous cooking demos and events and appearances, it leaves little time, but I like to look at it in the way that it's not just time spent running, its also time to clear your head, get some lovely fresh air, and you feel great after it! - and all of that in itself is worth it and can save you time when you are more productive because of it