Lidingöloppet plan

I've started looking a little closer at the requirements for the Lidingöloppet 30km cross country race, and it's starting to look rather daunting. There are a lot of training programmes around, but they are 12 or 16 week programmes. The way I read those is that it is assumed that you already have a reasonable base level behind you, and I'm not comfortable that I have that. Not yet, at least. I did think that it would be kind of cool to at least attempt the race this year in September, but I'm glad now that I haven't registered. My plan is now to do a lot more endurance and conditioning work over the winter, to get myself up to the point where I know for certainty that I can run 30km up and down hills without the risk of coronary failure. Then I'll start thinking about how fast I want to try and run. One thing I remember from my old running days is that large events with a lot of competitors (Lingöloppet has 10,000+) are not races where you can run your best time, or anything close to that. Unless you're standing right on the front line, you're not going to be breaking any personal records. Like Vasaloppet, there are cut-off times at various checkpoints. I'm pretty comfortable of making it through the checkpoints within those alloted times, so I don't think I'll have any trouble finishing. The idea is (and it's all theory at this stage) is to build myself up to the point where I can run the 30km about 15 minutes faster than I plan to run the actual event. That gives me a 5 minute float every 10km. Great theory. I'm also very aware of keeping myself healthy. Ever since I had a major running injury when I was 18 or 19 years old, I've been quite injury-prone in my lower legs. They will likely always bit a bit weak and it doesn't take a lot to put me out of action for 6 or 8 weeks. So I need to be careful about what I'm doing, and not to overtrain. What I've decided to do is to up the levels of my workouts but reduce the frequency of them, allowing myself plenty of recovery time between workouts. If I can nurse myself along like that then I should be ok, touch wood. A large part of this in the immediate future is to run without my stopwatch. I'm terrible when running with a stopwatch, forever checking my pace and trying to beat my time from the day before. That's just going to be a disaster for me at this stage. Right now it's not about how fast I can run. So that's the plan while I'm sitting here eating lunch. Puting it all into practice is going to be something else.