The Marathon Minefield

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With one week to go to the day you race your next marathon, it’s time to cut back on your training volume, rest a lot, and, for obvious reasons, not go out and get drunk. Those are the basics, which we all know. The following tips, however, will also help you avoid disaster and have a great run come race day.

With one week to go to the day you race your next marathon, it's time to cut back on your training volume, rest a lot, and, for obvious reasons, not go out and get drunk. Those are the basics, which we all know. The following tips, however, will also help you avoid disaster and have a great run come race day.

1. Think about the race, but don't obsess about it. The mantra for your countdown to race day should revolve around the word, ‘relax.' Be aware that one of the side effects of tapering is stress - stress that you can't burn off with a typical week of mileage and long runs. At the Hawaii Ironman, where many competitors spend most of their pre-race week in and around the Kona village, the collective nerves and desire to compete apparently jolt the common sense of many: On the day before the race, you'll see athletes burning through hard tempo runs leaving their best race effort on the pavement. The bottom line? Have a tapering plan, keep your cool and, if your goal is to beat others to the finish line, stay away from them until race morning.

2. Be organized. Marathons generally involve the following complexities: traveling to a city, transportation to a hotel, being in an unfamiliar location with unfamiliar dining, final training runs in an unfamiliar place, and perhaps a new time zone. Then there are the emotionally charged necessities like checking in, getting your race packet and gear squared away, and, of course, getting to the starting line at an appropriate time. To keep both mental and physical stress to a minimum, devise a detailed plan for what you need to do and when you need to do it. If possible, bring a supportive friend or loved one to help you navigate and do some of the grunt work (like getting groceries) for you. Do all of your thinking and planning well before you get near the race.

3. Surround yourself with the right people. As mentioned in tip #1, you need to factor in the growing levels of stress involved when you get close to race day. Even if you're not directly thinking about the magnitude of a 26.2-mile run, there's a part of your brain that knows it's coming and essentially starts freaking out. Adrenaline slowly boils within. This is a good reason to steer clear of fellow competitors whom you don't know or aren't comfortable with. Their stress will become your additional stress. As far as non-competitor companions, be selfish. It's best not to bring friends and family that might expect you to be the tour guide. You can't stay up late, and you can't walk around town. In fact, the night before my best-ever marathon, I spent time hanging out with a friend, a runner, who wasn't doing the race but was empathetic enough to know to keep the conversation light and off of the race. I think we even watched The Simpsons on TV. That was about as intellectually stimulating as it got.

4. During pre-race week, pretend you're fragile. Because in a way, you are. Here's the deal: Let's say you've spent six months training for a marathon. Your long run started out at eight miles and by the end you were doing 20-plus-mile long runs. Weekly mileage attained new heights and tempo runs became long and fast. Your body absorbed a lot of punishment. But now, in your peak condition, you feel invincible. You feel like you can run through a steel door. Ignore this feeling. The truth is, your body is teetering on the edge. Many runners catch a cold within the last couple of weeks before the race. Others get hurt while training. Some - and this is the most avoidable of the lot - tweak their knee or their back doing something as simple as taking out the garbage or moving a gas grill. Here's the message: Think before you do anything physical. Spend plenty of time on the couch with your legs up, and make sure you get ample sleep. The time to help a buddy move to a new apartment is not when you have a marathon coming up. You have to just say no.

5. Know thyself. This relates to tip #6; and although it's a subtle one, it's key for certain runners. The late Buddy Edelen, one of the greatest marathoners the United States has ever produced (and a former world-record holder of the distance), fell victim to this error before his first 26.2-miler. The morning of the race, Edelen, for reasons beyond understanding, decided to eat a can of sardines. Edelen wasn't a big sardine fan and his body wasn't accustomed to eating them. Secondly, Edelen didn't plan on eating them, it just sort of occurred. What also occurred is that Edelen became horribly ill during the race (as you might expect). So what happened? Why did he chug sardines? Here's the working theory: It being his first marathon, the stress of the unknown triggered a subconscious desire to sabotage the race for himself. So he wolfed down sardines. It sounds funny, but keep this in mind when you get within 72 hours of a race. Be aware of any desire to do something completely nuts. It might be some secret part of yourself that wants to take the pressure off, and sabotage quickly puts a stop to it.

6. Don't get weird with your diet. The pre-race diet has long been seen as the silver bullet of distance running. Rather than a bullet, however, it can be a minefield. Unless you have a lot of experience and a good coach (and maybe even a nutritionist), beware of extremes, like the early week high-protein/late-week high-carb diets. It's generally best to eat your standard diet right up until a day before the race. Make high-carb selections (pasta works), back off from high-saturated fat content, trans-fats and processed foods, and drink plenty of liquids in the days before your race.

7. Beware the temptation to use too lightweight of a shoe for the race. In one marathon, my goal was to break 2:40 for the first time. At six-foot-even and 158 pounds at the time, wearing a six-ounce racing flat was something I only felt confident doing in 5K events. But I took the risk for the marathon because I wanted every edge I could get. I feel like I was lucky on that day. I did break 2:40, but I vividly recall the final 10K. I knew that if I had to stop for any reason at all, my legs would have cramped up so fast I might have mistakenly thought it was machine gun fire. I crossed the line and my legs were destroyed. Perhaps I could have trained more specifically to absorb the punishment I took with the lightweight racers, but it's hard to say. One fact was that I was broken to pieces after the race. It took months to recover from the muscle damage. With that in mind, I ran other marathons in lightweight training shoes - not as fast, but the muscle damage was far less. If you're a big guy, I don't recommend using racing flats for anything longer than 5K (if that). If you're small and light, you can get away with less protection. My advice is to talk to a good coach about what you should wear, and be careful not to hurt yourself.

8. During the first few miles of the race, when in doubt about pace, go too slow rather than too fast. Ask any experienced marathoner about this, and you can probably get a story out of them about how they learned this the hard way. Yours truly included. In my case, it was the San Francisco Marathon. When I got my mile-one split, about 20 seconds faster than my target per-mile pace, I couldn't believe how easy it felt. I was convinced that I could hold the pace for 25 more miles. When I hit the halfway point and felt my legs turn to wet concrete, I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh.' The last 13 miles were miserably hard and slow, because during the first 10 miles I had heavily withdrawn from my ‘bank account.' The last six miles felt like 60. The take-home message: Warm up gently as you get into the race. If you lose 30 seconds in the first mile, you'll be able to make that up. Run those first few miles either on target or a little slower and, believe me, you'll be glad you did.

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