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Fun for Friday - Race Week


As I mentioned the other day, Sunday I will be running the Little Rock Half Marathon. This means this week has been all about tapering, planning what to wear for race day, planning out my race strategy. Many of you are runners, so I thought it would be fun to do a race week list for Fun for Friday.

You know it's race week when:

You obsess about which days you can and should run as well as the intensity for each run. I might build plans for others, but I'm terrible about following one myself. I got in my last speed work on Wednesday and planned easy yesterday, but Jason and I still went too fast. Sometimes it's hard to scale back.

You have memorized every single pace average to get you any range of race times depending on whether or not you're going to race hard, play it by feel, or need to know the slowest possible time you can go without going over your secret race time goal.

You watch the weather like it's your paying job. Really? That's the forecast? Low Saturday night of 56 degrees and 90% chance of rain for race day with the possibility of it turning over to sleet/snow by the evening. Hello crazy weather.



No matter how many times you check the forecast, you are in full denial so you check each local TV station's forecast as well as weather.com.

You have picked out at least 3 different race-day outfits. Of course it keeps changing based on the weather forecast as well.

You have a ritual of meals that you don't deviate from. Jason and I always have a vegetable tofu curry 2 nights before the race and pasta the night before using my homemade sauce, actually going with plain pasta (no enriched whole wheat anything) and even having a side of homemade ciabatta. I read a great article on carb loading that we started following - you slowly start cutting back on fiber and protein. The added carbs help you retain water for race day. I don't like what it does for my abs, but I like what it does for my performance.

You begin to question why you signed up for the race in the first place. Hello runner's amnesia again.

What is your race week like?

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