Marathon Recovery

It's been 10 days now since the marathon and I still haven't quite worked out the right approach to getting back into training. I've been reading around the subject but there is a lot of conflicting advice out there. I decided to just go with how my body feels and started easing into gently exercise last week. The first three days I did nothing and was exhausted from all the traveling on top of the race, but on the fourth day I went to the gym and did some light cycling. On Saturday I went for a swim and did about a mile, which felt great, then on Sunday I tried a 5 mile run. This went fine so I went along to the local running club on Tuesday night and was met with quite a few horrified faces! People weren't sure if I should be running yet, and more than one person mentioned hearing an old rule about resting a day for each mile following a hard run (so 26 days after a marathon!).

But I can't see how this can be correct: if I rested for a whole month I would put on weight, lose fitness and most of all go stir-crazy! It would be hard to resist putting on my running shoes, and hard to get going again to begin training for the next event. Of course I'm not going to rush things, but I'm going to keep running, sticking to small distances and fun, relaxed outings until after my birthday in early December. Then it will be 20 weeks until London so I will begin increasing my base milage again and work out which training plan to use to try and be at my best for April. I'm already so excited!