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Benn, I've been in Colorado since last Tuesday with our daughter's family for the holiday. We worked in 15 degree weather pounding fence t-posts for about 1,500 feet of fence, so I didn't get in any actual runs. I had dreamed of running half way up Pikes Peak on one morning but we got doing too many family things and I'm a woose with the cold weather that I would have faced on Pikes Peak. I did pull the grandchildren around on their sleigh for an hour or so which I will count as equivilent to a 4 mile easy run.

I saw you had asked about advice regarding your racing schedule vs. recovery and all. It looks like you are staying healthy as you extend your weekly mileage and as you race, so as long as you don't extend the weekly mileage too fast (10% a week) and remember to sneak in recovery-easy weeks once and a while, and keep listening close to your body for stress or injury, you seem good to go. Also consider Sasha's advice that you don't train for a specific race, but rather enjoy training for a life of running and the improvements will happen as you continue to extend the weekly mileage and the effort and the race results.

This time of year always catches me in a rest-recovery period with the holidays and 2 weeks of work travel with ISO 9001 audits. So this year will be a challenge since I have committed to keep my training up enough to run a 3:45 marathon in February with a running friend, Joe, here in Austin.

Best Christmas wishes to you in your training and running through your winter racing program.

Benn, another thought on doing lots of racing. Remember that Dr. George Sheehan basically raced every weekend and promoted the idea as a real good thing. A few years ago I got a copy of his book, Dr. George Sheehan on Getting Fit & Feeling Great. Talk about an inspiring book (three books in one). It was printed in 1992 so it is out of print today, but you might be able to find it on Amazon.com or at a used book store.

The 3 books contained in this one are: How To Feel Great 24 Hours a Day, Running and Being, and This Running Life.

There are loads of inspiring stuff in this one book set. I did a Google search and found the book available on Amazon.com for basically just the shipping cost from some entries. See below.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0517084627/ref=dp_olp_2/103-4563452-2935832

Enjoy, Paul

Benn, I started looking at some of the highlighted entries I had done in Sheehan's book and thought I would give you some quotes from the chapter 7, The Fun, starting on page 553. Play is the answer -the answer to the unsuccessful fitness program, the answer to the unsuccessful life. Once you've found you play, all else will be given to you. (from the chapter title page).

Page 557. ". . . children quickly discover that the next best thing to running and winning is running and losing.

Page 559. "Man," wrote Schiller, "is never more human than when he plays." Play is the path to self-knowledge, the way to self-acceptance. If you would know yourself and then accept that knowledge, you must first find your play, and learn how to play it.

Page 560. Running can be made to satisfy these competetive, explosive instincts. Training must be hard and exhausting, and competition frequent.

As you can tell, Dr. Sheehan thought you should train hard and race often.

My caution is always to listen closely to the message your body is telling you. Rest-recovery is as important to me as the hard training and racing. Enjoy, Paul

Benn, I would follow Sasha's advice about focusing for now on just getting used to running 6 days a week, mostly at easy pace with occasional tempo runs and races to keep things interesting. Since Sasha suggested 6 miles a day that's probably where you should start. Then I think the next step is working up to 8-10 miles a day. I don't think you really need to start worrying about longer runs than that until maybe early next summer.

Too bad you don't live out this way where you could train with numerous runners with similar goals. But being on the blog is the next best thing as we can help motivate, inspire and sometimes pester each other.

Your amazing race last week and the great improvements you've made in a short time make it look to me like you have great potential and the 3:10 finish or even much better for the marathon is easily within your reach if you'll put in the training. Good Luck.

You need to try to run 6 days a week and get a good day off once a week. You need to get at least two good workouts per week, and take an easy day after every hard day...it should go hard, easy, hard, easy etc. 45-60 miles a week should do you just fine. Try to get a variety of workouts in (like tempo, fartlek, hills, track intervals, and more tempo), and get one to two 2-a-days per week. Get one long run per week, and hopefully a couple 18-20 milers within the last six weeks.

Keep a good base during the winter and work your mileage up slowly in the spring and summer. Have fun!

Good suggestions from Tom, Paul, and James. Racing every weekend is fine if you do not taper at all - just approach your races as speed workouts. One race a week is probably plenty of speed work for you right now. Try to work up to 60 miles a week in a couple of months, then just stay there. Most healthy people can work up to that volume fairly painlessly right away, but after that you need to be very cautious and increase very gradually. Your goal for your October marathon should probably be sub-3:00.