I set about looking for an appropriate training schedule. I had found lots of ‘novice’ plans that started with 25 minutes walking- and wanted to find something that started with 2 mile runs. During my research I stumbled across a blog by an American girl called Emily. She wrote about her ‘road to running’; her training runs, 10ks, half marathons and marathons. It depicted the good, the bad and the downright painful moments of her training. Her honest approach to marathon training gave me the inspiration and courage I needed to stop faffing about, choose a plan and start training. Through her blog I discovered Hal Higden’s ‘Novice Marathon Training Schedule’ .

And so it began. I started running 3 miles three times a week as the official 18 week plan hadn’t started. Unfortunately the first official week of training fell during the week that I was on holiday with my family. I did a couple of 3 mile runs on the treadmills at the gym in the hotel but was nervous about the 6 miles. I roped in my cousins Will and Rob, along with Jack, to do the run with me. We thought we would round up the 6 miles to 10km as it sounded more impressive!