More than two and half thousand kilometers behind in preparation, reduced the weight by 8-9 kg, went through the worst part of a Saltin carbo loading diet, bought new race shoes and tested those, coincidence on the race day is not quite what we’re after here. Flight to Rotterdam is tomorrow, arrival there on Friday, Saturday for acclimatization (literally, it’s 10-12 degrees Celsius warmer there, the winter tuned body will perhaps suffer from heat attacks…), Sunday = race day. So packing is now.
One wouldn’t believe it. Running a marathon should be material wise simple and straight forward, the less stuff is with you, the better. But the homo sapiens living in the 21 century is detached from these simple truths. It’s stuff you need - and a lot! Of course the clothing is as little as possible. Just put shoes, socks, underpants, shorts and shirt on a pair of scales, quite precisely 700 grams, out of which shoes are 425g alone. Having read somewhere earlier that every half a kilo less brings about an improvement of 40 seconds on the marathon distance. Running naked would mean a good minute faster… hm, there’s a thought…
Let’s keep that in mind for Berlin and the end goal of this project. Anyway, race clothing is of course not all. Clothing before and after the race to keep you warm and a big black plastic trash bag that you can wear until 2 minutes before the start. Other race preparation includes breathe right nose strips that open the nose wings and make oxygen intake through the nose easier. Disinfection spray to clean the nose areas properly so that the nose strip sticks well enough. Massage oil to warm up the muscles beforehand. Magnesium, calcium nutrition additives for the days before, Power Bars for the last carbo rush 2 hours before the race and a small package of Energy Gel for intake at km 12 or 13, later in the race the stomach most probably is on strike. Finally of course marathon registration papers. Was that all? I certainly forgot something, it’ll come up eventually when standing at the starting line.
no training today
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