Setting a goal

Setting goals is vital to good running, or so I believe and I've wanted to run some serious miles for a while, but not on roads! - We've run the 3 Peaks in Yorkshire a few times, but never a race.

Recently received some terrible news regarding a pupil at school.
Due to confidentiality, can't say much at the moment, but the news isn't good.

Anyway, the plan is to raise some money, so Nick and myself have decided to run the Lakeland Trail Marathon on the 1st of July next year.
The idea is to get a number of sponsors, who we will display on our running tops as we run / attempt to run the Marathon.
I've been looking to run an organised Marathon for a while now, in particular one that is off road and when we found out the news, we put one and one together and hence - The Lakeland Trail Marathon.
Next year will only be the second running of the LTM, so it is very difficult to find out reports, thoughts, details of the course, heights etc. What I have been able to find is a few reports, most state it is one of the hardest runs people have done! - Time will tell.
Apparently the first 13 Km are all uphill.

So that's the goal - Run just over 26 miles, who knows how many feet of climbing, over trails and fells and raise a fair amount of money for such a good cause on the way.
I would think that most of the next crop of write ups will be based towards and on the Marathon training schedule.
My main concern is over training. At the moment I feel like I might be doing too much but we'll see.
Both Nick and I will diary our weekly sessions to see who, how much, diet, cross training etc.

Should be an interesting few months!

The winners time for last years LTM was over 3 hours, so must be pretty tough!!

One of the only images I can find of the race is below -

In the background is 'The Old Man of Coniston'

Link to the Marathon website is HERE