Most of those particular articles are really meant for preparation in the week leading up to your race and immediately following your race, so that you can give yourself the best chance of enjoying your marathon and then recover from it afterwards. I see no reason to be miserable after the run, after all. I highly recommend revisiting them when you get closer to your race.

In January, I am going to be releasing a book and a membership program about marathoning and marathon preparation that will have a lot more detail and specifics. Those 9 articles were written for some friends that were all running their first marathon last year and I wanted to just give them some quick tips.

Have you decided on a specific race to train for yet? I think that a year is plenty of time to get ready if you really want to run a marathon, although I did not run my first one until 7 years or so after I started running. PBS recently had a show about a group of people that went from completely sedentary to running a marathon in 9 months. One person got injured, but everyone else made it to the starting line and finished the race, and most are still running now.

Good luck with your training! I’m looking forward to seeing how you and your sister progress.