26 miles 385 yards

I somehow think that this distance is already tattoed in to my brain.... And I have a sneaky suspicion that over the coming months (especially from Christmas until April) the thought of running a full 26 miles and 385 yards is going to start to scare the living daylights out of me. Do I think I can do it ? Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have entered, I don't know many people that deliberately set out to fail at something, but I know I have a long way to go.

Now that I have decided to run a marathon part of me wants to just get on and do it, but the sensible side tells me that the more training I do now and the better prepared I am before I start the "real" marathon training the more likely I am to succeed, at this point for me I see success as crossing the finishing line in one piece. I think I will start with that as a goal. If I can manage it in under 5 hours that would be great but for me finishing will be a result worth celebrating...

I have been looking at lots of different marathon training plans and they all seem quite different and it can make it hard to decide on what I should do.... Between now and Christmas I have three half marathons to run so I am concentrating my training on them... This means my long runs will be 14-16 miles one week and 10-11 miles on the other weeks and I feel quite comfortable that the training I am currently doing for these races is more than adequate and I should start to see some improvements in my HM times over the next few months.

When I look at the training plans for marathons the 14-16 mile long runs seem to kick in at about 8 weeks.... So do I just carry on doing what I'm doing or do I start to increase the mileage before that and just repeat the last two weeks before the taper to fill in the gaps ?? Any advice would be welcome !


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