. Our Essential Marathon NewsletterOur free, weekly marathon email is designed to keep you on top of your training. Short enough to be readable, long enough to be useful, it contains at-a-glance schedules for every pace, themes and hurdles for the week

gone the extra mile, responding to queries straight away and making the forums what they were. I think the time I achieved shows that the schedules and coaching really do work. Without Steve's guidance and the structure and support of the whole

by using them in unexpected ways. Schedule a reminder to yourself so that your power words pop up on your mobile phone or computer 10 minutes before your run, for example. Or record yourself describing a workout when you felt strong, then listen to or watch

in a compact training session, as well as presenting an interesting new challenge to inject into your schedule.

by scribbling down notes in the margins of your training schedule." First defence: Track what you're really eating in a journal, or with free apps such as Weight Tracker for iPhone or Diet Point for Android. Beat it: If you really want to shift winter weight