Countdown to Gold Coast Marathon 2006!!!!

As you all know, my primary objective this year is to beat shin splints, but nevertheless, I will continue to set other goals in the meantime, starting with a sub 3 Hr effort at the Gold Coast Marathon for the first half of the year! This Marathon will be a stepping stone to my attempt for Sub 2:45 and a national ranking at the Gold Coast in 2007. However due to the shin splints battle and my committment to easing back into speedwork, I won't be able to do kind of preparation that I would undertake when fully fit so will have to work around that. Pending discussions with Coach Pat, I expect the key aspects of my preparation will be:

* Carefully build up my weekly mileage from 24k's this week till about 45-50 by the end of February and then continue to increase it cautiously in March to 65-70k's a week by the end of the month, including a 2hr Sunday long run. 90% of my running will continue to be done on the treadmill till April.
* Commence a 17 week program from Monday 6th March.
* It is unlikely I'll be able to do Pat's preferred Brisbane Half and Doomben 10,000 lead up races as the Brisbane Half in particular will be too early for me so I might have to settle for the half marathon during the Warwick Pentathlon or the SMH Half Marathon followed by a 10k at Brisbane Road Runners four weeks out from GC.
* Continue my core strengthening and stability work over the next two months before raising the bar in April to hire a specialist PT of the highest standard and/or act on Bruno's suggestion of doing one on one sessions with Pilates practioner and former ballerina, Nicole Popov at the Gabba Sports Medicine Clinic(ok boys, you can laugh now, but I'm deadly serious!). Some of the best Marathoners in the Group such as Phil K, Jess K, Daniel T, Peter H, Glenda and Tesso are all rock solid and/or carry zilch excess fat and you don't need a rocket science to tell you those kind of bodies increase your strength and endurance for a Marathon.
* Maintain a rigorous but healthy eating regime from April on. Alochol intake will be scaled back from April and all but eliminated in June.
* Speedwork pace will gradually be increased to 3:50 mins/km, but will not exceed that speed till May. From the first Tuesday in May I will use the last nine weeks before the Marathon to increase my speedwork to 3:30 mins/km, but no faster(naturally, I'll throw in hideously short recoveries!!). This is the riskiest part of my preparation because I will be running the Marathon only 45 seconds per k faster than the top speed I will reach in speedwork, but if Glenda can do it, then so can I! I will be speaking to Pat about adding a tempo run or rolling hills run to my program to offset my reduced intensity at speedwork. And of course, I could always do longer runs or an extra twice a day run :) I don't care if my shins don't give me any grief between now and June, I've broken down on no less than three occasions whilst busting a gut running sub 3:20 pace and I want to be absolutely sure that I'm over the shin splints and have completely eliminated my overstriding problem before running that fast again.

BRING IT ON!!!!