Never Try Anything New on Race Day….unless…

…you’re racing a major marathon!

As I edge closer to Berlin Marathon race day, I’m starting to get all of my kit gathered and I’m checking out the logistics of a hectic weekend of travel. During training, my clothing, shoe choices, nutrition and hydration strategies are designed to replicate what it is that I’ll be using come race day. Obviously not on every run, but in key workouts or ‘dress rehearsals’ I will deliberately match route profiles, bottle drops, gel timing etc etc, so that when I get to race day, there are no questions over how I’m approaching the 26.2 miles ahead of me. I’m not testing a new shoe or a new gel brand, or a pair of shorts I picked up at the expo….all fraught with risk in my view! However, there are many aspects to a race weekend which are way beyond our control.

Here’s the things to try for the first time on a race weekend - because you probably have no choice!

Have a really stressful journey just before the race

In training you’re unlikely to deliberately put yourself through a long car journey, flights, passport control queues and public transport, potentially in a foreign city that you have never visited. All of this is new to your body and brain and generates a certain degree of psychological and physiological stress that will be impossible to mitigate. Do what you can by picking travel options that leave you with the least amount of variables and distance to cover once you arrive. Plan your routes from arrival to the hotel or race start, have wiggle room in your timings and a back up for when things go awry. Cancelled trains, late flights, road closures etc etc, I’ve seen these things rattle many an athlete on race morning.

Eat different food at different times to usual

You may only have access to restaurants, and potentially in a country with a totally different food culture to the one you’re used to. Carefully curated nutrition plans with balanced carbs, proteins and fats suddenly go out the window. Even the most disciplined among us will be forced into eating at an unusual time or consuming ingredients we’re unfamiliar with. In fact I’d argue that this one issue alone has derailed more of my own races than anything else. I’ve had some bad gut issues which have severely hampered my performances in times gone by. Memorable for all the wrong reasons - The Endurancelife Gower Ultra, 5 toilet stops (in the wild…) added 20+ minutes to my race time and took me way out of podium contention. London Marathon 2021, my first ever major, I lost a couple of minutes having to stop in the portaloo at mile 9, costing me valuable race time that was impossible to regain. Amongst friends and family I’m now known for bringing all my race weekend food with me, in NYC I had several kilos of precooked microwaveable rice, bagels, fruit, energy bars etc. It cuts out the restaurant issues, but no-one in their right mind eats like this at home with any regularity.

Double your average step count the day before your target race.

Touristing in a new city, walking around the expo, a dander down the road for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Before you know it you’ve done 25,000 steps and that’s not counting your shakeout run. If you can, arrive a couple of days in advance to get all of the expo and number collection done on Thursday or Friday. Keep tourist attraction visits to a minimum, or do an open top bus tour! Eat early on the night before and make sure you’re sitting down and resting by the early evening.

Sleep in a new room on a different bed.

Some people can nod off anywhere on anything, but others can be like the Princess and the Pea. When you’re travelling for a big race, it’s inevitable that you will be staying in accommodation where the room temperature is a bit different, the bed isn’t what you’re used to, there’s ambient noise from city traffic, doors slamming, people chatting. Your brain is on high alert and you don’t quite get the restful night you were hoping for. I try to go to bed unreasonably early on race night, in the knowledge I’m likely to struggle to fall and stay asleep, so the sooner I start to try, the better. Noise cancelling headphones are also a game changer for me. Stick them in before bedtime and block out all of those intrusive sounds.

Eat breakfast at a time you never normally would

Major marathons often require hours of travel and waiting around to get to distant start lines. 4am alarms added to time zone shifts mean that you might have to eat at an ungodly hour to give it time to digest, or even bring it with you to eat on the journey in. All totally novel experiences, unique to each event. The only way I know what works for me is because I’ve now had to go through this process multiple times! Bagel, banana, honey. Transportable, easily digestible and can be consumed anywhere at any time.

Stand around for an hour and don’t warm up before you race

Major marathon race starts are normally the worst preparation for what you’re about to undertake. It’s almost impossible to sit down and relax. The crowds and chaos don’t give you the space to breathe, let alone do a jog and a few strides. You’d never start a training run surrounded by hundreds of people, standing up fully exposed to whatever the weather decides to do throw at you. But this is your final ‘new’ experience before the gun goes. Accept it. Everyone else is in the same boat. And as soon as you’re through the start gantry, the adrenaline surging through your veins makes it all a distant memory. Those new experiences go into the memory bank and are what makes major marathons just that little bit more special

Just another Sunday.

In some ways it is just another Sunday. But in most ways, it really isn’t! Embrace it. Sometimes the ups and downs derail you, but sometimes it works out perfectly. All you can do is keep showing up!