Race Week Jitters

Oh boy. 3 months of training has come and gone and race week is here. I'd love to say I've followed the training plan to a T and feel more than ready to smoke 26.2 miles. But that's not really the case. I've stuck to the training plan pretty closely, but I haven't been perfect. There's been a few exceptions here and there because it's quite interesting trying to train with Ronnie being gone for 3 weeks and traveling a fair amount. But I still don't quite feel ready. My legs the last week or two have just been heavy. They don't hurt, they aren't tired, per say. Just heavy. I can still do all my runs, but I don't end a run thinking, "well that was a walk in the park, 26.2 will be a breeze."

But regardless, race day is quickly approaching, so I'm choosing to flip my mentality and get this show on the road. I've never run a marathon, but I've run enough races and exercised enough in my life to know that very little has to do with your body and A LOT has to do with your mind. If I go into Sunday thinking I'm not ready, Sunday will suck majorly. If I go into Sunday thinking I'm going to glide through the race without a care in the world, it will only mildly suck! HA!

Here's what I'm doing to get ready this week:

1) Eating - Ok, you caught me, I eat every week. But this week I'm focusing on eating A LOT of carbs. I'm eating carbs until carbs don't look good anymore. I'm trying to be smart about all my carb consumption because I'd prefer not headed into the race with tons of extra pounds to carry, but I'm focusing on eating a lot of carb rich foods. Bagels for breakfast. Fruit for snacks. You get the trend. I'll focus on getting my carbs in all week and then on race day I'll eat what I always eat before my long run: a bagel with peanut butter and a banana.

2) Sleeping - I'm big on sleep in general. I like to get 7-8 hours a night. I'm happier when I sleep more, which in turn means Mckenna and Ronnie are happier (when momma's not happy, aint no body happy!) But a night or two a week I'll only get 6 and be dragging the next day. This week I'm focusing on getting a solid 8 hours a day so my body is well rested before I beat it up.

3) Drinking - I drink water like a camel. Ever since pregnancy and nursing I have continued to drink about 100oz of water a day. So I'll just continue fueling my drinking problem through the week.

4) Tell myself I'm awesome - Oh goodness. I wish I was kidding. About 3% of me is kidding on this. Unfortunately the other 97% of me is completely serious. While tapering, your mind can play all sorts of tricks. You come off running 40+ miles a week and are essentially barely running, and you begin to feel lazy and out of shape. You wonder if you've done enough. You wonder if you should do more. But this week I'm going to shut down all the thinking with one simple (and humiliating phrase): You're awesome. Ha! I'm going to feed myself that line until I believe it, and then I'm going to feed myself full of it some more. I want to strut to the start line, and tell myself I'm awesome. I want to remind myself of that at mile 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and as I drag myself across the finish. Because if I don't believe I'm awesome enough to complete the race, I probably won't be awesome enough to complete it. So…this week, I'm going to fake confidence til I feel confident :)