I have a plan so cunning...

...that you could pin a tail etc etc. Barring the intervention of tribes of pygmies with blowpipes and poison darts (not common on the banks of the Severn in early June) I'm unlikely to be winning the race. Other people have entered, which has blown my most realistic chance of coming first.

So I must look at completing the course, collecting the medals and T-shirts (four of each, it seems) and impressing the gullible with my tales of being 'only 24 hours behind the winner.' I need to work on:

• being thinner. At 2 sec/lb lost/mile faster, there's plenty of free speed to be had by stepping away from the pies
• keeping my heart rate down, so that I burn fat rather than glycogen for fuel
• walking. I doubt I'll run every step of the way, so I should train my walking muscles; also low HR walking sessions should improve my fat-burning capability.
• mileage; I'll need to do a lot of it for endurance
• strength. Abs and buns of steel will help support my core

This is all based on some of Hadd's theories as taken to their logical conclusion by that nutter Andy Collier. I believe them both to be right, but I'm not fit enough for 50 miles a week or three 30 mile runs, so I've needed to find an easy way to get the benefits. My plan looks like this:

• three runs of about an hour with an average heartrate of no more than 150 (which is 75% of my maximum) but lower if possible
• a long run of about 14 miles/3 hours max. with a rucksack and water bladder, again at 150 or lower if possible. This was carefully chosen as the doc's is 7 miles away and I needed to pick up a prescription
• one two hour walk, wearing a heartrate monitor so that it counts as training; the idea is to walk as fast as possible, with a rucksack on, to push average HR as high as possible
• a walk with the children on a Sunday; not training as such, but a valuable way of adding a few more miles

This has been enough at present, but I will add a weights/core session and dust off my old Powerbreathe to give my intercostal muscles and lungs a bit of a stretch.

I'm currently on week 3 of the plan and all is going well; 14 miles killed me and I had to walk on day 1 week1, I was a few minutes quicker in week 2 then ran all the way at a lower HR in week 3. Admittedly this was 10:43 min miling at an average HR of 147, which won't set the world aflame, but it's improvement. Hadd reckons that improvement comes in 6 week cycles, so I'll devote 21 weeks to the current plan (19 to go), before introducing some higher heartrate stuff for the final 12 weeks/two cycles then a two week taper. What can possibly go wrong?

I started back to exercise after my PE at a pound shy of 14st. I lost the first half stone while I was exercising rather than training, so cycle 1 day 1 saw me at 13st 7; last week's Wednesday weigh-in was 13st 2.5. I'm not trying anything more fancy than portion control and picking some healthier options; we'll see, shall we?

Finally, roadworks have lead to the closure of a local dead-end road; they've erected a sign which reads 'Access to frontages only.' Surely, that was the case even before the roadworks..?