I think the project, if you look at it, is an interesting one - it appears, to me at least, like this thread has slightly misrepresented his orginal aim: not to make Beijing himself, which he says he would not have been capable if fit, but to examine the decline in male marathon running, which is an important question which does desperately need addressing, especially if we want success in 2012.
I am, as many others have said, neither inspired nor insulted by his story, if anything, I think it is perhaps slightly dangerous to be too strong a follower - to decide to do something about your life and then crash-train for two years doesn't seem like the most sensible route to long-term development of the sport.
Many others have commented on his targets being somewhat unrealistic, and with this I agree, and I ask anyone who disagrees to look at the obvious. He sets out a list of targets and results here - http://www.theroadtobeijing.co.uk/trtb-results.htm. After he starts to really "get good" at Reading there is a turning point and suddenly his targets become consistently unattained. There is a big difference between running a sub 1.26 half and qualifying for the Olympics marathon. When you first start running there is generally a massive improvement quickly, which his progress certainly indicates. However, once you hit a certain point, progress becomes more diffcult - each second is harder to achieve. To think he can knock 3 minutes off a half-marathon time in a few weeks is to do what some people may spend years trying to do - to equal what he ran before would have been realistic, or maybe to improve by <30 seconds. You cannot except to continue with that rate of improvement.
However, I think what he is trying to do with the project and with the profiling of young debutee marathoners is very important for the sport. His story is also interesting as part of the identification of rates of improvement in new runners.
