I'm running the London Marathon this year!

That title dawned on me yesterday as the new year brought with it the inescapable fact that I can no longer say I'm running the marathon “next year”. This is important as it sounds less daunting than “this year”.

The only positive is that I can now accurately say I ran “last year's” marathon. Having to say I ran “this year's marathon” just sounded weird from a tense perspective.

Grammar aside, it's now only 16 weeks 'til race day, and I'm well behind on the training. This next few weeks will need some pretty serious sessions to get up to where I want to be, but it's a fine balance between building up the mileage and not hurting myself.

Now, pain is a natural part of training, which is one of the many reasons I'm not a fan of the sport. If I weren't so bloody-minded I'd happily never wear trainers again! But there's the pain from having had a “good” training session (training is never good), and the pain of having screwed yourself up, and it's the latter I need to avoid.

So goal of the next few weeks is to build up the mileage so I'm somewhere around 50/60 a week, then I can kick into some specific training to help boost performance.

Just need to keep focused and not let the general crapness of January distract me. It's the work I do now that'll get me over the line in 16 weeks, so time to stop fannying around and get stuck in.