The final 24 hours before the marathon seem to be the most trying period of training. It seems difficult to do anything right with thoughts constantly on the race.
I slept in this morning, something I try not to do on Saturdays. But just letting myself sleep in felt really good, and made me think that with all those early Saturday morning long runs that I've been doing for the last four months, I can spoil myself to a couple more hours in bed.
Had a big, high-carbohydrate breakfast, and I will need to have the same on race day. I didn't really do much at home, other than sort out my racing gear for the big day and the energy supplements I will consume whilst on the run.
Throughout the afternoon I surveyed the course, to appreciate how long it really is and how much of a challenge I am going to undertake. The first part of the course is described as "rolling", with many uphills and downhills. The second part is very flat along the waterfront. Somewhere in the middle I get to cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which should be very exciting. How many times does anyone get to do that? And no, not in a car!
For lunch, another high-carbohydrate meal of Wendy's, and mucked around in Borders just having a peek at some books. After that I decided to head home and rest.
At home I helped myself to three small-ish servings of pasta (and still counting while writing this), rather than one big meal. This is all part of the carbo-loading exercise that I am implementing during these last days. The premise is that the body is only able to convert glucose to glycogen at a certain rate. If the body is bombarded with glucose, it converts a given amount to glycogen and store the rest as fat. Obviously the more glycogen I can store, the better chance of not hitting the wall.
With all the excitement of tomorrow, I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight. The amount of sleep I get, or don't get, won't make me a faster runner on the day.
All the hard work that I've put in over the last four to five months has finally come down to this. I had a single goal: to complete the marathon, and hopefully finish within 4 hours. I received an excellent training programme. I stuck to the programme as best as I could, though there have been times where I have missed a few training runs. I kept in touch with my "coach" and entered a couple of races to a get a feel for the real thing.
I slept in this morning, something I try not to do on Saturdays. But just letting myself sleep in felt really good, and made me think that with all those early Saturday morning long runs that I've been doing for the last four months, I can spoil myself to a couple more hours in bed.
Had a big, high-carbohydrate breakfast, and I will need to have the same on race day. I didn't really do much at home, other than sort out my racing gear for the big day and the energy supplements I will consume whilst on the run.
Throughout the afternoon I surveyed the course, to appreciate how long it really is and how much of a challenge I am going to undertake. The first part of the course is described as "rolling", with many uphills and downhills. The second part is very flat along the waterfront. Somewhere in the middle I get to cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which should be very exciting. How many times does anyone get to do that? And no, not in a car!
For lunch, another high-carbohydrate meal of Wendy's, and mucked around in Borders just having a peek at some books. After that I decided to head home and rest.
At home I helped myself to three small-ish servings of pasta (and still counting while writing this), rather than one big meal. This is all part of the carbo-loading exercise that I am implementing during these last days. The premise is that the body is only able to convert glucose to glycogen at a certain rate. If the body is bombarded with glucose, it converts a given amount to glycogen and store the rest as fat. Obviously the more glycogen I can store, the better chance of not hitting the wall.
With all the excitement of tomorrow, I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight. The amount of sleep I get, or don't get, won't make me a faster runner on the day.
All the hard work that I've put in over the last four to five months has finally come down to this. I had a single goal: to complete the marathon, and hopefully finish within 4 hours. I received an excellent training programme. I stuck to the programme as best as I could, though there have been times where I have missed a few training runs. I kept in touch with my "coach" and entered a couple of races to a get a feel for the real thing.
And come tomorrow, the entire journey, starting from the moment I set that single goal to the time I cross the finish line, will all be over, and the hard work and the self-sacrifice will have paid off. This is something which I can be truly satisfied with. Only a small fraction of the world's population have participated in marathons. I am just one of them.
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