Training change for another challenge

On the training front, this is my plan from the last 2 weeks. Explanation as follows.....

I've had a rethink on training over the last couple of weeks and formulated a new training plan.

A few things prompted this. The previous schedule would have put me on course for a Marathon in little over 7 weeks. Since I’m not actually running a marathon then, I though, there’s no point in training so hard for one. Then during one week I caught a bit of a cold. I took this as a sign of overtraining so I took a few days off to be sure. In the meantime I read a book ‘SERIOUS training for Endurance Athletes’. Once I’d got over pages of needless graphs (The authors are American – I know how they love their statistics!) I used to generate a new plan. The methodology to creating it is pretty complex, it took me 6 worksheets of an Excel spreadsheet, all cross-referenced, to churn it out!

In a nutshell the year is split into 13 x 4 week blocks. There are 4 main stages during the year.

Base – Building a base fitness
Intensity – Increasing distances, building strengths etc
Peak/Race – The season you are building for, during which you run in all the main events.
Recovery – About 4 weeks of very light training to recover.

I’ve built a plan to have me hitting the peak/race sector at the beginning of November. This is not by accident. My next piece of news is that I’ve got a guaranteed entrance into the New York Marathon. Being a non US competitor it’s possible to get guaranteed entry as long as you book flights and race-entry through authorised travel agents.

So, I’m in, my seat on the plane is booked. Now I just need a hotel, ideally within staggering distance from the south end of Central Park (the finish line!). Any recommendations?