We've targeted a specific marathon - the Christmas Marathon in Olympia WA on 2/21/08. Everything is going good so far - I ran a 16 mile run on Sunday, which I must admit was really hard. I learned that it's really important that I eat a piece of toast w/ peanut butter and a piece of fruit just about an hour before my run, and that gu works a lot better than mini snickers for during the run (even though I heard different advice from friends). It was a rough run, I got really hungry after about 6 miles and my energy was quite drained by the end. I had to walk a little bit around mile 14. As I've learned, though, there are good days and bad days running and the best thing is to just get the miles in at this point.
In terms of speed I'm still really slow. The idea is to finish the marathon in December and then start working on speed - maybe dropping back down to 5k training plans and then building back up from there. The shamrock has a 15k which would be a good run next year.
