Yeah, don't really ever nap. Doesn't ever seem to fit in with daily life.
IDK...part of me thinks I should just try to do what I did last year because it worked out pretty well but the other part thinks I can put my time to better use by maximizing my overall fitness. Decisions...decisions...
18 week or 12 week? Is it better to start the schedule 18 weeks out or build the first 6 weeks at your own pace? Not sure I'll be ready to be follow some rigid plan in a month.
I would definitely go with the 12 week plan
Take it with a grain of salt, since the person giving the advice here (me) hasn't trained specifically for one goal marathon for more than 12 weeks in at least 6 years. Before you guys chuckle, let me explain what I mean by that.
The last time I actually trained for more than 3 months with one specific marathon as my goal race was Boston 2010. I basically trained from December 2009 - April 2010 with just that race as my peak race. I made a lot of fitness gains, but I don't think my result reflected my fitness going into that race. The 3 marathons I ran in the next 2 years were all sort of "after thought" races where I was basically in peak half-marathon shape about 6-8 weeks out, tweaked my training for a few weeks and then ran the marathons. Then, I signed up for Boston 2013 and started training 4-5 months out, got hurt a month out and hobbled through that race. My last 3 peak marathons were all done on 6-12 weeks cycles, and I feel that if you are already running close to your "peak training weekly mileage" for your marathon, 8-12 weeks seems to be a sweet spot for most people for a few reasons:
1. Specific Marathon Training is Tough - You have long runs, long marathon paced runs, longer tempos, and in most plans even 1-2 medium long runs a week that takes 90-120 minutes. It's hard to go after it week after week for more than 2-3 months at a time.
2. Injury risk / Mental Burnout - These could be two separate things, but I find that a lot of times they actually are pretty closely related. I feel like the longer your training cycle is, the more likely either (or both) of these factors pop up. Due to a combination of cumulative fatigue, real life obligations (family/jobs/etc...), and other factors, the longer the training cycle is the more you have to battle one of these things becoming a distraction.
3. "The best runners in the world do it" - This is perhaps a lame argument, but sometimes when I do things in training I look at what faster runners are doing and think "if it's working for them, maybe it will work for me too". (of course, when it comes to training volume / paces, those need to be adjusted). In 2011, after two of his Kenyan runners had head turning performances at major marathons (Moses Mosop with his 2:03:06 at Boston and Abel Kirui winning the world championships that summer), Italian coach Renato Canova posted some samples of the training these two runners did leading up to their marathons, as well as a lot of his thoughts on marathon training. This actually led to a lot of 2:15-2:30 type Americans copying various bits of their training. One of the main things that one of my friends and I took away from his posts were that "you may have to train a few months to a few years to run a good marathon, but you only do specific marathon work for about 6-10 weeks before the marathon". What that means if that you have to take months or even years to build the aerobic/muscular systems needed to finish/race a marathon, but once you have the foundations set, you only really need a few weeks doing stuff like tempo runs, marathon paced runs, (some) interval workouts, long runs targeting your goal race. If you are training already, a lot of those elements should already be in your weekly training anyways.
So anyways, that was longer than intended and it's probably not applicable to everyone. However, I think in your case, especially if you don't feel like you want to start follow a schedule in a month, is to just take a few weeks to build up your mileage before doing a 12 week schedule. You can obviously feel free to insert a tempo run, a shorter marathon paced run or even a long run in there when you feel like it, as that can only help you be ready for the 12-week phase once you get there as long as you don't overdo those sessions. Think of it as a 6-week "preseason" where you don't really have much of a mental pressure to stick to a rigid schedule.
. Right now I think we're doing well enough to jump up next week. If either of us struggle or have trouble finishing that last day of the week then we're just going to repeat that week. Our mantra is take it slow but with absolute consistency.
Appreciate it, 
poor fat finger job by me. Yes, 2:45! 2:15 would be a killer all out 800!! Hmmmmmm, I wonder if we could pull off a 2:15 on the track?? 
