They say the wives of the Tour De France riders can always tell when their husbands are peaking because they start to see their internal organs through their skin. While I haven't asked my wife to look for my kidneys just yet, I'm starting to take race preparations very seriously and am focusing all my training on just four things: heat training, strength training, endurance training and sleep. So instead of swimming at my gym I now sit on the leg press machine for an unsociable length of time before cooking myself in the steam room, while at the weekends I've built my long runs up to five hours. And to recover from all of this I'm making sure I get between eight and nine hours sleep every night – when, not surprisingly, I dream about training…

Everyday this week I've been out the door by 5am to do a three-hour run. To make them more fun I've been splitting them in two. The other day I ran a half marathon, then ran up every hill I could find. This morning after another 13-miler, I decided that dragging big branches around a wood near me for another hour for core training was the best thing to do. I probably look very weird but I'm past caring – training for these races is bound to turn you into a bit of a nutter.

Work has taken the upper hand this week, much to my disdain. Having said that, I've crammed in two two-hour cross-country sessions. Most of the terrain was sand and dirt tracks, as used to test tanks. I didn’t have any military hardware but I have been trying out our Berghaus race kit. The gear is awesome for bad weather outings and mudslides, and it made the change from road to trail a doddle. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stop work from getting in the way next week so I can stick to my schedule of running two marathons.