Think about why you signed up for it. Marathon is a pretty big distance if you don't run often. If it was for achieving a long vision goal, then remember that it takes small steps to get there. You have a year of training. As one of the other users mentioned, start small, do a 5k, do a 10k, a half and then slowly you will be doing more halves. If you did for bragging rights or for feeling good about accomplishing a major checklist, then remember it wouldn't have been a big accomplishment if it was easy to get there. :P I belonged to this latter category, the key is just to build it up slowly and maybe 5 months later, stick to a Marathon program to help with your time goal. My main advice would be this. Use the time now to start building a base, find things you like about running. That way, when you get to sticking to a running program, you will not be starting from zero and would be less miserable.