The best laid plans of Mousie the marathoner ...

I think everyone knows by now that I love to de-colloquialise as much as I like making plans  (even if they don't come to fruition).

After my marathon training fail last year, pulling a muscle then getting flu (although partly also having the get-out clause that Grandad didn't know), I've decided to extend the marathon training this year so I definitely get to the start of VLM at least ...

Last night I was taking a more serious look at training plans: having started with the idea of just using the one from the Non-runners Marathon Guide for Women (Dawn Dias) which appealed to me on the basis that she was a complete non-runner/non-exerciser who wanted to do a marathon for charity - and has a wonderfully (slightly acidic) view of the whole process with the knowledge that she is writing after the event and did get round the course to completion.  I had put her plan into the Good Run Guide website pretty much as soon as I had my acceptance for London - and then extended it back along similar lines to get myself running again gently.

I then had an email from Grandad asking about the Essar Four Villages Half Marathon in January - which was admittedly a month before I was planned to get up to that distance - but then I figured I could take that month out of my extended plan, and just do the middle bit of my plan twice (I hope this is still making sense!)

HOWEVER (and this may be where I go into the realms of fantasy), I was pootling around the Runner's World site yesterday - ostensibly to see if there was any way of reporting a potential missing magazine - and ended up looking at their more detailed plans ... some of which are still designed for running 4 times a week (as the NRMGFW plan suggests) and I looked at the mileage tally for the 16 week 'Sub-4.30' plan which pretty much matching up with my already-planned January mileage anyway. 

I may well be getting far too over confident with my recent improved running prowess but I thought I might assess how I'm going round about the half-marathon time and maybe start in about week 3 of the RW plan (the first 3 weeks at least have the same mileage anyway). 

I guess I don't need to start counting my chickens yet as I haven't even got back up to four runs a week (this week is the first) ... although I have now got over nine hours worth of music on my marathon running playlist on my ipod to get me through! Because of course the score to my run is the important element ...