Last week twitches!

I'd heard that the taper is just dire, and it was pretty bad - I was itching to run, I just wanted to log miles but was very disciplined and didn't.

In the week leading up to the big day my legs felt like lead and I felt really lethargic- seriously I was panicking that I wouldn't be able to run the marathon AT ALL with legs feeling the way they did. I just wanted to sleep! All very odd as I normally hop out of bed in the morning (well okay that's a bit of an exaggeration - I like my sleep) but I do LOVE going straight out to do my run or alternative exercise if its a cross train day!

I generally eat pretty well but had been had been making sure that there was some carbohydrate in each of my meals for the week leading up to the marathon. I’m not kidding - I think I ate enough PB bagels to sink a battleship and had also become a little overly obsessed with oatmeal (or porridge as us Brits call it), with banana, raisins or strawberries in it or whatever other fruit I could lay my hands on. Yum! I also made a concerted effort to replace many of may usual caffeinated coffees with water - something I need to continue to do after the marathon is over!

I stopped all strength training & just did Vinyasa Yoga to enjoy a good stretch out on Monday before the marathon & on the Tuesday I headed out for 4 miles with my running group and planned to head out for another 3 the following day. However, I succumbed to heavy legs and lethargy and it just didn’t happen. There had been (and still seems to be) lots of sickness going around so I was hoping that none of the family was struck by anything ghastly int eh last few days. After all this work and the roller coaster of winter training, now I just wanted to get to marathon day healthy! So by Thursday night I was getting super twitchy that I had not done enough in the taper and was really aware that there is a fine balance between resting enough and running enough – Did I get it right? Who knows, I guess I’ll find out with more practice!

So Friday arrived, the day before the race – and I woke up feeling SH... Shocking! I never suffer headaches but had the most terrible headache I have had for a very very long time! I cancelled my plans for the day and stayed in my pj’s until about 2pm but I was in panic mode – how could I run this marathon feeling like this?! SO I threw on my running gear and headed out for a loop around the block. It was quite windy but I needed to reassure myself I was going to be okay to run the following day – it was the right thing to do. I literally did 2 slow easy miles and felt good, half a mile in my headache had dulled and by the time I finished, the cobwebs were blown away and I felt strong and rested. I just hoped this wasn't developing into anything worse overnight.

Light evening meal prepared and eaten,

water drunk,

gear laid out, checked, double checked & checked again

spectator arrangements organized,

and so to bed!