A month to go before your marathon or half marathon is a great time to check off the things that will best help you get the most from all the work you have done. Here is a list of some things to consider between now and race day.
Have Faith in your training and resist looking for signs of fitness. A race or maybe two should tell you what you need to know. When workouts go from improving fitness to proving fitness, injury risk goes up. You also want to avoid having a training day better than your race.
Race to get a fitness test. I prefer to predict races from races and not training runs. Now that the temperature is heading to more like what we expect on race day, it is a good time for a final pretest.
Plan Your Race, Race Your Plan by being a true geek and actually writing out your plan with contingencies for things that could go sideways. Put at least as much focus on how you want to feel at points along the way as the splits you want to run.
Fuel the Fire with the proper amount of hydration and calories. Have your nutrition plan dialed in for race weekend. Show up at the start fully hydrated and fueled and follow your plan during the race to finish strong.
Know Your Logistics by reading the information provided about the race and plan your weekend. This will make sure something silly does not take a big bite out of the energy best used for racing. Mentally walk through at least the day before and through the race.
Break the Chronic Fatigue you have been training through by allowing more recovery between workouts and long runs. This allows full adaption to training and will have you at your best in a few weeks.
Be Kind to your body by paying attention and tending to any aches or pains that you have been dragging along through the last few weeks or even months. Be kind to your body and it will do amazing things for you on race day.
Meet ME at the Monumental Marathon Expo on Friday at 12:30 to go over the most common race day fails and how to avoid them the next day. We will also talk about the pace team.