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.
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