Marathon Training Plan REmixed

First off, I need to explain the picture above. It's from the 2009 Akron Marathon. My colleagues put together a 5-person relay team to support me and run with me through the race. Why are there two people running with me? Because Andy (in the middle...light blue tee) ran his relay leg (from mile about 9 to about mile 15) and then decided he was going to finish the race with us. Mind you, the most he'd ever run at that point was like five and a half miles. Nuts? Yep. He ended up finishing 16+ miles. I love my colleagues <3 They are the best, most supportive people, ever.

So it's just about a month before I begin marathon training! This week, has been incredibly tough as far as working out goes (remember, control the controllables). Last night I got a change of perspective, and got re-motivated!

My old roommate, Emily, had a Hanukkah party at her mom's place and her Uncle Dale is a marathoner. He gave me some perspective on my long run training. Taking some of his advice, things I've learned from browsing training regimens and articles on the internet, and some of my other training experience, I formulated a training schedule that I'm pretty excited about and really looking forward to:

Let's get some things straight though:

• Things are bound to change a little bit, every week is not the same and sometimes I just don't have time to get a run in.
• It's going to be the middle of winter. Some of these runs may very well turn into indoor (cross my fingers) bike rides, yoga practices or (groan) treadmill jaunts
• If there is every any point that I am feeling overwhelmed by the mileage, I'm going to scale it back to something more palatable. I'm going to do everything in my power not to get injured again.
• Now, I not only have my own schedule to think about when I planning when I get my runs in, but I have Brandon's to think about as well. Now that we've moved in together, things are no longer about just me. 

In order to get myself ready for training I need to push up my mileage a bit, I'm talking 6-7.5 mile long runs by January...so it's not unattainable at all. I also want to concentrate a bit more on what I'm putting into my body; namely, processed sugar, "edible foodlike substances" (so Michael Pollan would say) and alcohol. I'm not going to watch my "diet"...the holidays are coming up, for goodness sake. I'm talking about eating with intention. Eating real foods. Eating local foods. Lastly, I need to be very conscious about cross-training. If I start working it more into my schedule now, I will be hopefully find the motivation to make it more routine when I'm training. I have no doubt in my mind that I got injured during my last marathon training jaunt because of my lack of cross-training. 

If you have any other good marathon training advice, please send it my way. I'd love to hear about how others are training for marathons (especially through the winter) and what you're doing to keep motivated and injury-free!