For my own personal perusal, when the dark and the rain makes the whole experience utterly miserable, here are the reasons why I'm determined to enjoy this marathon more than the others (not that they were, bad; or at least not in retrospect):

1. My base level is higher. I'm quicker over one mile, and seven miles, so training will take less time/be more productive. Thats the theory.
2. I've started training earlier (over a month earlier).
3. Motivation to train. Lose weight, do a-lotta-great-work-for-charidee.
4. Organised sessions, including a long run, three times a week.
5. Its supposed to be fun, goddamn it.

Later: Yowsers, that last run was a beaut! Good pace, strong finish. If only they were all that good ... karmically, I guess I've a shocker or two to come.

I'm not much of a blogger. I've never kept a diary, its as much as I can do keep my address book and appointment list up to date... but, I am usually pretty good at keeping a running log as the training builds up before the couple of marathons I've run, so I'll try and steal some of slashdot's bandwidth make a few notes ... Theres every chance that this will die a death, though.

Some preliminaries:

1. I've got a number for the 2002 London Marathon (thats April 14, fact fans). Its 26.2 miles, and I'm not in shape to do it. I'm not unfit, but I'm not eating very healthily, and I'm certainly not marathon fit.
2. I'm running at least 4 times a week at the mo', with either a fifth (long) run or a game of rugby at the weekends.
3. I'll try and make notes about how its going at least once a week, just so I can look back for motivation when the training gets soul destroying. Maybe, just maybe, I'll succeed.

Its Friday, I've given my last class and wikipedia is not scaling too well. So, I'm sitting around waiting for ntk to come out when I found this journal thing. How long has it been here? I wonder if I'll ever use it again?