Picking up from yesterday –
Cue up the Rocky Theme Song (“Gonna Fly Now”), because I was a total champ in the prep work for this race.
Knowing that I already had to wake up really early in the morning to get the shuttle to Dodger Stadium, and that on top of that Daylight Saving Time began on the day of the race, I acted like sleeping was my job leading up to race day.
Thankfully, my actual job that pays the bills didn’t start until the day after the race. So, I had all the time in the world to go to bed at 5pm each day if my heart so desired. On race morning, I even got up naturally 10 minutes before my alarm. It was lovely!
I hydrated like a boss. I upped my calories an appropriate amount. I had cut-off times for the day before the race of when I would slow it down on that water (so as to not have to pee while on the course), and to stop eating (so I wouldn’t have an upset stomach or be too full to run it out, baby).
I will say probably the one sort of mistake I made was that I’ve been avoiding Luna protein bars for a couple months because they have so very much sugar in them. However, I was out of my new favorite protein bars (which they don’t sell at any stores close to me).
And I did always feel properly fueled with the Luna bars. And honestly, I was a little afraid to change anything I’d done before other races (which was silly I had stopped using them in training). So, I ate the last 4 I had lying around in the two days before the race.
4 in two days was too many. I could kind of feel the sugar, and my face broke out like crazy. Eesh. But this was nothing that I think ultimately truly affected my run in any way (unless the pimples show up in the photos…)
I also got my packet on Friday instead of Saturday. Even though the wait at the convention center seemed long – and Friday felt like an eternity (since I basically had nothing to do) – I still stand by that glorious decision because I had no worries on Saturday, and got to just stay off my feet.
So, all the work was in place… For the most part. I’ll admit I trained more for speed* in the first half than truly training for the distance, but I trained enough that I knew I could handle the 26.2 – even if not evenly.
*By speed, I mean speed for me – not actual speed in real life, because I’m still totally slow.
And I’ll pick up with race morning tomorrow.