A Winter of Running Coming Up!

Ok so I AM BACK!

Everyone keeps telling me to "take it easy", "don't overdo it" and "you've lost too much weight".
But when did I ever listen to anyone?

I twiddled about with my running last week, doing about 16 miles in 3 runs. The friday run, a 7 miler on my favourite offroad Ridgeway near Chinnor, told me that I am probably being a bit easy on myself. But when I got down to planning my running for the winter and the preparation for my Feb 11 marathon, I did think that this friday offroad jaunt rather than a sunday morning road run would be one of the core parts of my training.

So here's what I've resolved :

1. I will run 4-5 times a week only. Hopefully this will keep the achilles tendon problems at bay.
2. I'm going to "cross-train" seriously. I did this when I lived in Switzerland with plenty of cycling and swimming and I don't remember ever being injured there. It'll be swimming mostly, always once and mostly twice a week.
3. I'm going to do quite a few races while I have my weekends free. I need to hone my competitivity and give myself an incentive to work on speed and strength as well as endurance.
4. My training week will feature a build-up of mileage over the next 12 weeks before a 2 week taper.
5. All my long runs will be offroad (2 x 16; 2 x 18; 1 x 20). I will supplement this with a half marathon in mid December and a flat 15 mile road race 3 weeks before the marathon.
6. Each week I will do one hard speed or strength session, either a tempo run, mile repeats or some gnarly long hills. All these will be on firm surfaces.

I'm taking Siberian Ginseng as a speculative boost to my immune system, Omega 3 fish oil capsules, Glucosamine / Chrondroitin combo and a "men's health" multivit/ mineral.

I feel good about my planning and have written the "shape" of a programme already, with quite a bit of built in flexibility.

I'm still posting my training and routes on runningahead.com, but have just joined another fantastic UK runners site called Fetcheveryone. I am "Coffeeman Running" on both these sites and my diaries are public.