Training schedules

Faced with the reality of preparing for my first marathon at the age of 40, I looked online for some good advice. There are as many marathon programmes out there as there are running gurus. Since all you need to run is a pair of trainers, there are lots of experts out there, most of them American and specifying their logs in miles. Having been in SA for 11 years, I'm thinking in km.

I dredged from somewhere in my memory that Tim Noakes is the running guru's guru. He's linked to the Sports Science Institute in Newlands, and contributed to Bob Woolmer's cricket book, so he must know a thing or two. In googling his name, I came up with a plan that had 26 weeks of training, based on minutes of running rather than distance. Since it's labelled 'for the non specialist', and it suits almost exactly the time I have to train, I've adopted that one. To start with I'm going to divide the minutes by 5, and run that distance. I may be able to use a smaller number in a couple of months time. Hopefully.