Who am I and what on earth am I doing?

Me, you ask?... 28 yr old British fella living in Washington DC, ran 2:39 in Chicago this year. Have only been running seriously for a couple of years, but keep getting more and more serious about it year by year. Always just went from one marathon to the next, not committing to running, but started to commit to it about two years ago, and now starting to get more competitive (if anything, with myself) and thus cutting down on marathons and letting running take over as my primary goal - I'll admit that.

Since Chicago I've been following a form of the Arthur Lydiard plan/system/call it what you will.I got through about 10 weeks of base training, holding onto 130-140 mile weeks (doing three weeks at that, and then back off to 100 for the forth week)... my body held up fairly well to this - previous mileage going into chicago this year was averaging just under 100 / week if you include tapering and recovery weeks in the average. I’ve been very careful, and sticking to trails, sleeping more, eating well, and using lighter performance trainers instead of clog like stability shoes. My goal race is London in April, already have my place through the 'UK athletic championship' qualifying requirements, and want to get my body in a position where I have a serious and reasonable chance of running 2:30. I have just finished a phase of hill based workouts in Jan and after this 'down' week (the goal is to just shave the top off of 100 for the week)... I'll begin 4 weeks of anaerobic stuff to take me through Feb...

According to the plan, that'll take me through to a phase of Conditioning in ~March, and then tapering through to 23rd April. I've scheduled a bunch of local DC-based races between now and then as great excuses for tough tempo runs. A couple of 10ks, a couple of 10milers, a half marathon...