First time out

I have a lot of questions about the marathon des sables. I've read the forums, read all the books I could find and tried to adapt various training schedules to my needs. In the end though, I have to admit that I'm flying by the seat of my pants and hoping I'll put together the right set of training to get me through. I figured writing about my day to day struggle with training, work, home etc... would help me get my head straight and maybe provide some useful information to other mad fools who suddenly wake up and wonder why they've entered this crazy race.
Today, I ran 11kms with no weight at a reasonable (for me) tempo, averaging 11.4 kms per hour. I'm relatively fresh this week, since I didn't attempt a long run on the weekend or Monday. I'm still getting over a bout of Flu and a sprained ankle. I sprained my ankle while running in the sand dunes near my home in The Hague. During the nice painful walk back to civilization, I managed depressed my immune system so much I ended up with the flu. I guess life likes to play these nice jokes now and again.
Over the coming weeks, I'm going to add some links which might come in handy fellow crazy people. I've already added a link to my training schedule/log. If you take a look the start of this year has not been amazingly smooth. I did manage a few good weeks where I built up to marathon length training sessions (handy living exactly 42 kms from work). Last year I did pretty well at sticking to the program. I just had some time off last October after having laser surgery, from which I still haven't recovered.
Well, wish me luck. Only a year to go and I've got to go from a plodding 4 hour marathon runner to a full blown multi day ultra marathon specialist.

Oh god, what have I done........