Road to London 2009

[El Gordo]

This will be the family-friendly, clear-conscience marathon, brought to you by Less Is More™ Training Products. The Rules are as follows:

1. The fundraising target shall be £2000. (Pledge amount is £1500. The charity is Sense.)

2. The time target shall be sub 4. (PB is 3:50.)

3. The number of training runs per week shall be three (3).

4. The Long Run shall be conducted on a weekday evening. (That is, not during Family Time.)

So, less is more, for sure. I’ll take the Hal Higdon novice plan, cut out one of the short runs, and throw some speedwork into the middle of the medium session. Cross-training? Pretty unlikely, unless my wife’s threat to get a rower or static bike materialises. (I might give that somemore thought, actually.)

Rule 4 will be the biggest challenge. 18 miles of suburban laps, in the dark and cold and rain, with an early start the next day and still the washing up to do? Um, yeah, bring it on. Right.

I don’t know if sub 4 is possible for me on three sessions a week. I might not even be able to run all the way on three sessions a week. But Rule 2 is something to aim for.

The plan proper will kick off just before Christmas. Until then, the goal is just to get into the habit of running again. Six short runs in the bag so far. It’s not as hard as I feared - yet.

Dan, do take a look at the Furman marathon plan(s) at http://www.furman.edu/first/index.htm . These have had quite a lot of coverage in RW and elsewhere. They specialise in 3-runs-per-week marathon training, and claim to be very successful. I'm considering using one their schedule if things continue to go well. They last 16 weeks, so I don't need to decide until after Christmas.