Pre-Race report

I liked how Yumke broke his report into a pre race and actual race report so I'm going to do that as well. It started at the race-expo where I picked up my bib. Those the have partaken in Toronto mrathons know that the Running Room always has a booth where they have this spin the wheel game where you can win various things. I think they changed the wheel this year so that it was almost a certainity that the only thing you could win was a small sample tube of toothpaste and that's what the previous 5 people that spun the wheel ahead of me had won. I spun the wheel expecting to win toothpast also when it landed on a 20% off coupon. I think that was the best prize they had so things were looking good.

I picked up a copy of the IRun Magazine (there has to be an Apple trademark infringement there)which they were giving away at the expo. Ended up reading it while eating dinner that night. There's a nice little blurb on Terry Fox in there. Nice inspirational story.

Lunch on Saturday consisted of pasta and meatballs and dinner conisted of just pasta and sauce. I made sure to try and stuff myself. My weight has dropped quite significantly these past few weeks and on Saturday morning I was around 141 pounds. In the past, this would be an indication that I was dehydrated, but my weight has consistenly been like that for the past few weeks so it could have been some real weight loss (not that I have much to actually lose).

I have to say that this time around, it felt different. There really wasn't an urgency to this race. It's not like in the fall where I was really nervous the day before and even this past March when I had to fly to California. To be honest, I was almost already accepting that it wouldn't be so this time around. In fact, i had signed up for the Chicago marathon a few weeks ago as a possibility for a fall race. I wouldn't normally have done Chicago again, but I thought the flat course and good crowd support would give me the best opportunity to BQ.

My shoes for this race would be the Brooks Adrenaline 6's which is a shoe I've been using before. But these weren't your ordinary Adrenaline 6's. I picked up these neon green adrenalines quite a while ago at a discounted price. I guess people didn't like the colour. Brooks is now selling the Adrenaline 8's so I figured I had to use these things eventually cause they were getting a bit old.

The night before the race, I pinned the bib to my shirt and got my stuff ready. For nutrition, I would take 5 gels, 1 of which would be consumed before the race and the other 4 to be taking during. I also brought some salt pills in a little pill box. I also brought a bottle of gatorade which I would carry with me during the race. I was still worried a bit of salt intake. I had some stomach issues in Napa and I was basically going to be doing the same thing this time around. I did some surfing around and found an article that said that it was too much to consume an entire gel at one time and that one should only eat half a gel at a time with a couple of gulps of water. This kinda made sense so I decided I would drink from my gatorade bottle every km and then would drink only water at the aid stations and take half a gel beginning at the 45 minute mark and then every 20 minutes or so when I got to an aid station. I was bringing the salt pills along, but I wasn't sure if they were going to be useful. They contain a lot more salt then what a gel has and it's quite concentrated. I think they may have been responsible for what went down in Napa, but I ws bringing them along in case I needed them.

Went to bed at about 10pm and slept fairly well. Had set the alarm for 5am, but ended up waking naturally at 4:30. Ate a bagel with PB and jam and downed some gatorade. Took a shower got changed and was out the door shortly after 6. Oh yeah, i should probably mention that with my experience at Napa, I spent 5 minutes picking away at anything that might resemble lint on the inside and outside of my socks! Smooth as silk when I put them on!

Having learned the lesson the hard way last year which had me waiting for 45 minutes to get into the parking lot at the marathon start, I ended up avoiding the main route into the shopping mall where the race starts. Instead I took a bit of a detour and was into the parking lot within 5 mintues after having gotten off the freeway. Thank you google maps!

I had about 45 minutes to the race start, first thing to do was to obviously hit the portapotties. It was still pretty early and there wasn't much of a line-up. I jogged around a bit and would end up going again 2 more times before the start. They used to have this big open field near the start where people would do their business, but they built something there this past year. People were looking for alternatives.

I decided to not wear my foot pod for the race. As I mentioned before, i didn't want to carry around this extra thing on my foot for 26 miles and risk it throwing my stride off. I put the HR monitor on and jogged around to make sure it worked okay. I stretched a bit, downed a gel and some water and then headed to the start line.

I lined up in the 3:00 to 3:30 group and squeezed into middle. The national anthem was sung and then we were off.