Its Race Week!!!

5 more days to Race Day. I am quite happy and excited for it. 

To be honest, once I dropped the goal pace / finishing time expectations and decided to switch my focus to just running strong, a lot of the nervousness and apprehensions just disappeared. I plan to run 1 more run tomorrow (a brisk 7K) & maybe a quick 20 min run on Friday to shake out the legs and any built up nervousness if needs be.  I plan to do some band / light weight workouts till Thursday and also a couple of swim sessions before the race. That much should leave me feeling trained enough but also rested & at a "battery-full" level.

I'll have a very early rise on Sunday and am prepping for it by waking up & going to bed half an hour earlier than usual this week. So far, so good. I have been wilfully drinking more water & fluids these past couple of days. I'm normally so bad at hydrating enough that I'm trying very hard to be hyper conscious of my water intake now.

During this training cycle I had been trialling various fuelling habits on my long runs to see which works the best for me. I've determined that fasted runs are a really, really bad idea. I lose steam very fast during the run and develop bad migraines post run. So about half an hour before the run, eating something is an absolute must. I've tried a couple of bananas, a tablespoon honey, a slice of bread with PB and Jam, a couple of dates, my energy laddoos (which are basically just oats, dates, pb and honey blended together and made into little balls) and they all work pretty well - digested quickly enough and delivers the necessary energy to fuel the first bit of the run. My race day go-to is going to be Bread, PB and Jam and two Bananas. I'll be leaving home about an hour before flag-off time so the plan is to have the sandwich at home and the two bananas en-route. 

When running longer than 60 minutes, its normally recommended that you fuel during the runs as well. In addition to the hydration/electrolytes its good to supply the body with some easy-absorption carbs to prevent the dreaded "bonking" during the run. In the past, my choice of hydration has been glucose water or diluted apple juice with a squeeze of lemon & salt, but this training cycle I thought I'd try a couple of "elite" hydration supplements. I've been using Fast & Up from the beginning of the cycle and Unived's Hydration salts during the last couple of training blocks. While I'm pretty sold on the fast&up reload tablets, the Unived elite hydration mix literally left a bad taste in the mouth. I still have a lot of it left so I'll probably continue using it till its over. It does do it's job just that it doesn't taste great. 

I also trialled the 15g CHO Gel 100 from Unived in the salted caramel flavour for mid-run fuelling. This tasted great and am guessing it did serve the purpose of delivering quick energy but I did feel like I needed the loo every time I ingested the gel. Prior to this I was fuelling my runs with hard candy. :) I'm not even kidding. I was having a combination of Alpenliebe's caramel candies and Kopiko coffee candies. This was just a treat! Instant sugar rush and it made me look forward to the next fuelling point in the run. Probably wasn't great for my teeth but it really served the purpose I think. But the real winner (and the fuel choice for race day) is Haribo's gummy bears. Each gummy bear is about 2g of carbs. Ideally for me, I should be having about 30-40g of carbs per hour of running. My calculations are not exact science, but I worked that out to be 2 gummy bears for every KM after 6K. I like gummy bears so its like a little reward for completing 1 km. Only problem is that 30-32 gummy bears takes up space. I'll be running with 2 small ziplock bags of 16 gummy bears each which will leave two telltale bulges in the pockets of my leggings that looks very funny in photos (problems! huh?). But its a small sacrifice that I'm willing to live with :). On race day I'll be depending on the aid stations for hydration. In the past editions of DRHM, they've been very well stocked and well organised so no worries on that front.

One more update on Saturday after I collect my Bib and then its Race Day! I think the next 5 days are going to fly by.

10 days to go (plus, a shoes update)

I'm halfway through tapering now. In about 10 days, I'll be lining up at the start line.

Its time to really get race ready. Training-wise, I've done all that I can, its now time to wind-down and recover enough so that physically I'm rested enough to take on the race on "fresh legs". So when I say really race-ready, I'm speaking mentally, nutritionally as well as gear-wise race-ready.

Mentally, I'm in a really good space right now. After my 19K run in Trivandrum, I feel confident I can run the full 21.1K, strong and at a reasonably brisk pace. I just need to keep other stress factors at bay from now till the 20th and continue to feel good about running the distance. "I got this"!!!

Nutritionally, I've always been weak on the hydration front. Getting my requisite water intake during regular weeks itself is a challenge since my thirst drive isn't very strong and setting reminders on my phone to drink up hasn't proven effective enough. Hydration during race week is that much more pertinent which means I somehow, simply, MUST drink more water. How though?. On the other hand, carb loading has never been an issue since our regular meals are generally high enough in carbs. Need to get in more protein than usual though, for the strength. 

Planning my race-day outfit is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my race-readiness process. While I haven't yet settled on what I'm going to be wearing, I do know which shoes I'm going to put on.  :)

During the course of my training I had to unexpectedly retire two pairs of running shoes. The outsole on the dark grey ones ("Smoky") had become worn out and had no traction left. I would find myself skidding in it on my runs. The outsole on the red & white ones ("Capsicum"), while otherwise good & dandy,  just came apart one fine day. I did try sticking it back on, but that (as expected) didn't last. Smoky only had a mileage of 348 km on them and Capsicum was fairly new with just 266 km on them and both their uppers were still in great condition so it was quite disappointing to have to give them away. With two pairs out of commission, I was left with just one pair ("Guava") to train in and with more than half the training left to go. 

I never really need much of an excuse to go shoe shopping and here was a perfectly legit excuse! Introducing Salt & Pepper! :) Salt is an ON model I hadn't tried before (Cloud X). It has more cushioning than the Cloud Flow model that I'm used to, but looks way more cooler if you ask me. To be perfectly honest, I bought it solely for its looks but after going on a couple of short runs in it, it feels like a winner all around. Pepper is the current edition of the Cloud Flow. The mesh on the upper is more close knit than the previous version but that doesn't seem to affect anything other than the look of it. It also seems to have a higher "roll" on the outsole from mid foot to fore foot which I think helps but it may be too soon to tell. The last long run I did was in Pepper and that went well, so I'm thinking it will work just as fine on race day. Now I just need to plan the rest of the fit around it.

Ooh! Excited! Before I know it, race day will be upon me!

Time to Taper

And just like that, the hardest bit of the training plan is done. I started tapering this week - gradually decreasing the running volume so I can recover and run the half with relatively "fresh legs". :)

I am in Trivandrum currently so for a change, my long run didn't have to be 20 odd loops on a 900m loop. In fact, on Sunday, I had the best long run in all of the training. Weather was nice - cool, slightly rainy, breezy, the route was a nice long 10K which I repeated twice, and even though the roads had many, many uphills and downhills, I really, really enjoyed the run. My pace was quicker too than last week so it has boosted my confidence somewhat. I will be very lucky to have the same weather conditions on race day (I'm expecting hot and muggy) but the route will be much flatter so I'm hoping it will be a good, strong run on 20th.

Pace-wise, I'm adjusting my expectations. A lot. 2:10 looks highly impossible. If I can run at an average pace of 7'00" and finish under 2:30, I will still be very pleased - even though its not a PB.