Manchester Marathon 2013

I make it 16 weeks from monday the 7th. I was just telling mrs samoff last night that I'm not officially training for the marathon til then.

Training starts Sunday after 4 weeks off, was going well, decent long runs and good weekly mileage when I got an injury, did a bit of cycling to keep tikcing over. Just got over that and came down with flu Christmas day, will try to get out Sunday for a long run at a gentle pace before the serious stuff starts.

Cheers for the replies. Thats what I make it too as my program has race week as "Week 0" so week 15 starts on Monday 7th.

JedWard. The P&D programs are from the book "Advanced Marathoning" by Pfitzinger and Douglas.

Mine will start a week later but i've been "keeping my eye in" with 35-45 mpw up until this last week.  In taper ahead of HM on Sunday and then maybe one gentle run next week ahead of a weekend away.  Monday 14th the formal stuff will get going and I can't wait

wondered if there are any gels being given out at any of the aid stations

After reading a few injury reports now by you runners, I have bought some books including the P and D one. Nothing worse then an injury. 

I have reasonable knowledge of running, but not to the extent you lot have. What I do have though is manging injuries through other sports. 

What I would say because running gives you the freedom of mine, it easy to get out on those roads without resting. Yet most people I know from a sporting background to an high level. Including Kelly Holmes say rest is one of the most important factors.

My training starts on Monday again so I thought I'd best start showing my face in here ready

Jedward - they gave a couple of gels out to each runner last year but I can't for the life of me remember at which miles they were, partly due to the fact I used my own.

Right, I am entering this bloody race tonight.  I have to set it in stone.  I am already 3 weeks into training for it (always start early in case of injury/illness).  Doing P&D 55-70.  Manchester killed me last year, still have nightmares. 

18 miles this morning nice and easy, getting fitter...

9 miles done earlier. Time to start stocking up on some audiobooks for those longer runs.

Dominic Keavey wrote (see)

Ally, everyone got a bag and a tag and a number. So all the bags and the tags were the same. the number (obvs) went on your shirt, not the bag. All the bags were piled up in a luggage tent, literally thousands of them, with no way to discern whose was which. Bedlam. The organisers spent the next six months apologising.

Thanks Dominic.  So same bag, small tag, no label and no structured organisation into rows?  Let's hope that this year will be improved.   I'm sure that it will.  

As well as that 'left-in-the-street' at the 10km I mentioned, another shocker was out in New York.  Those guys had 40,000 to deal with - I ran in 2011 - and insisted on using tiny vans from their sponsor, UPS.  Each van had 1,000 bags and they allowed one guy in the van alongside rows of 3/4 of the bags, while the other 1/4 was on the floor outside the van, with 4 people handing these ones out.  Cue lots of cold runners (finishing at a similar time because of the way they allocated numbers) hoping that their bag was on the floor and not at the front of the van!  Hubris can be a dangerous thing.  Still, the last I heard was that they were pushing on with EasyJet-style charing extra if you took a bag for 2012 (before it was understandably cancelled). 

I did my first longer run of the year at the weekend as I ran 20miles on Saturday, including parkrun, but ended up weighing more today than I did at the end of last week!

I know Jedwards it'll be here before you know it !! so better knuckle down now and get the training done.