The Before

The week before my marathon I was a bit of a mess.  I had 3 good runs to finish off my training schedule and felt good, healthy and mostly injury free, with just a little a little bit of shin pain, but I was not sleeping well, had stupidly scheduled an out of town meeting mid-week, and was going nuts packing and re-packing and worrying that I was forgetting something.

Thursday, I cut out coffee in the hopes that I would actually get a good night sleep.  After my final run, I did a final review of my suitcase.  Garmin?  Check.  iPod?  Check.  Chargers?  Check.  Shoes?  Check.  In the end I threw in just about every combo of running clothes I could think of - shorts, shorter shorts, capris, tights, tank, tee, long sleeve, jacket, throw away sweater.  I also needed clothes for our post-race celebratory dinner/Thanksgiving feast at the Empress Hotel, and all the other things you need for a weekend away.

I got to bed early on Thursday and actually got a good night's sleep, but the alarm went off way too early on Friday morning.  The BF and I both took the day off work so we could get the drive done Friday and would have Saturday to relax in Victoria.  I am so glad we did this.  With the long weekend, plus marathon traffic, plus ferry crossing, plus dropping the dog off with the BF's sister in Kamloops, it was going to be a long day.

We were listening to CBC the whole way and catching the weather updates.  As the day went on, the forecast for Sunday was going from bad to worse.  Windy and showers went to wind storm and down pour.  Ugh.

14 hours after leaving home, we pulled into our hotel just outside of downtown Victoria.  I'd left booking a hotel until way too late and couldn't get anything right downtown.  While it would have been nice to be closer to restaurants, and the starting line, it was nice to be at a quieter hotel in a nicer room for our budget.  We had a kitchenette in the room, which was a great bonus for race day.

After such a long day of driving, sleeping on Friday night wasn't a problem.  Saturday we slept in before going out for a big carby breakfast and heading downtown to the race expo.  Everything went smoothly at package pickup.  I was glad to have done the BMO Vancouver Half Marathon to know the drill for big races.  The expo was a bit smaller, but we had a look around and after doing a lap of all of the booths (and numerous blog contest entries in the past) I decided on picking up a pair of CEP compression socks and put them on right away.

We strolled around the harbour and downtown, until I realized that I probably shouldn't be spending quite so much time on my feet and we hopped in the car to drive the course.  I'm glad that we took a ride along the route the day before.  I'd been told that the course was very flat, but then was told by another runner that it wasn't as flat as she thought it would be.  I wanted to know what I was in for.  The verdict:  Definitely not flat, but no giant, steep hills.  At least, it didn't seem that way from the comfort of a vehicle!

Next up:  Dinner time!  Who knew it would be so hard to find a nice, plain pasta dish?!  I don't (usually) eat meat, and when they weren't talking about the weather on CBC, they were talking about underreported cases of listeriosis in seafood, so all I wanted was pasta and veggies.  It was not meant to be.  I ended up with a fresh salmon filet, with parsnips and kale, and loaded up on bread.  I was feeling very nervous and had a small glass of wine with dinner to help me to sleep.

I had my race bib on my shirt and chip on my shoe the night before, and was as packed as possible as we were switching hotels for our final night.

I fell to sleep easily, but woke up almost every hour on the hour until the alarm went off at 6:15am.  I was up and dressed quickly, then made myself a small cup of coffee and toasted a bagel and peanut butter to bring with me.  We were going to have to park about 2K from the starting line so that the BF could drive around to different points on the course after teh start, so I wanted to give us lots of time.  I ate my bagel on the way and had to choke it down.  I have a hard time eating when I'm stressed or nervous, but I knew I had to get it down.  As we pulled towards our parking lot, the half marathoners were coming up the road.  We walked towards the start line as the runners ran in the other direction and cheered them on.

My stomach was feeling kinda funky so I beelined to the porta potties.  The 8K runners were just finishing so we spent some time going back and forth watching the finish and lining up for the porta potties.  The first half marathoners crossed the line, one final stop at the porta potties and my stomach finally seemed settled just in time to line up at the start line.

I have to admit, at the starting line my confidence was very low.  I'd had a tough final long run, then missed two runs in the first week of tapering.  Though my stomach was feeling better, having had an upset stomach all morning had me worried that this was a sign of things to come.  I put myself near the back of the 4:30 group, and just hoped that I would start feeling better once I started running.

There was a big cheer about 5 minutes before the gun, and I figured out later that that was for the wheelchair marathoners.  There were 4 wheelchair athletes competing in the marathon.

The BF snapped this photo right before the gun.  Could I look any more tense?

What I did right:

• Drove down 2 days before
• Packed healthy snacks for the drive so I wasn't eating gas station snacks
• Drove the course
• Booked a quiet hotel with a kitchenette
• Had my outfit and everything I needed for the morning laid out the night before
• Wore compression socks the day before.  Shin pain - Eliminated

What I would do differently next time:

• Make a ferry reservation in advance
• Research restaurants for a pre-race dinner in advance (I had planned to do this but ran out of time).
• Eat more than one bagel with peanut butter the morning of the race
• Hydrate better the week before the race.

UP NEXT:  The Race Report!