Marathon Preparation Guide: One month until race day

Your marathon is coming up one month from now and reality is starting to set in. You’ve been training and thinking about it for months, but it seems so close!! Take a deep breath and follow this guide to get yourself ready each step of the way.

One month out

This is when you are hitting your peak training and getting ready to start tapering for the race. It’s the point to focus on refining not just your running, but also all of the other key components, fueling, clothing, shoes,etc., to get ready for the marathon. 

Presumably, you’ve been practicing your in run fueling, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. This is the time to perfect your fueling strategy. What are you taking and when? How are you going to hydrate? Are you integrating enough electrolytes? 

Plan out what you want to wear for your race and run some long runs in it to make sure that it doesn’t give you any issues. Things that seem to work fine for shorter runs can become an unexpected problem (hello, chaffing) at some distances.

Evaluate your shoe situation. Do they have enough life in them to get you through the marathon? If not, now is the time to get a new pair to take them on a couple of decent runs before your race.

Your last long run should essentially be a dress rehearsal for your race. Of course, it won’t be exactly the same (unless you somehow have some really good friends setting up tables with cups of water along your long run route), but try to make it as close as possible so that you are comfortable in your plan and you’ve tested every part.

3 weeks out

Taper crazies, also known as “maranoia”, are real. As you ramp down your training from your peak weeks to get ready for your race, you’re running less and have a whole lot more time on your hands.  

First, you are not going crazy, this is a phenomenon that is pretty well known and manifests in a few ways

1. random aches and pains – some of these are psychosomatic. You are so close to your race and worried about things going wrong that every little thing you would normally just overlook becomes a major source of concern. However, some of these are really happening. As your body is given time to rest and repair, there may be things that do start feeling uncomfortable that didn’t before. Unless you have chronic issues (so you already know what this feels like) or you specifically injured something, it’s best to focus on rest, recovery, and general mobility.

2. Stir craziness – you’ve been training regularly for months, adding time and volume. Now you’re cutting back each week, with just a few runs the week of the race. What do you do with all that time? It may be tempting to fill it with cross training or other active pursuit- do not do this. That undermines the point of taper. Try to identify some things to keep you occupied that maybe you’ve been putting off: read that new book, binge watch that show you heard about, spend some time with friends and family (although depending on how the taper crazies are treating you, they may have a different thought on the matter).

1 week out

Check the weather. You’ve probably been obsessively checking for weeks now, but this close in can give you a reasonable sense of what to expect. If there are any major wrenches like extra heat, extra cold, rain, etc., this gives you a bit of time to game plan for how to adapt to those challenges. 

3 days out

Start your carb loading. Carb loading is a crucial step to your optimized performance. You can do a two or three day carb load, although 2 can be quite an adventure so I recommend spreading it over three days. Hopefully, you’ve practiced a night before meal once or twice during your training cycle. Regardless, focus on shifting to simpler carbs, reducing fat and even protein intake, and topping off your glycogen stores the best you can. This can certainly be a bit overwhelming and even those of us that love our pretzels and bagels can swear off bread products for a while at the end.  

Here is a good resource to plan out and implement a solid carb loading strategy for race day

2 days out

Check your gear- all of your gear. This includes clothing, shoes, hat, sunglasses, fuel, watch, and whatever else you plan to use on race day. Doing your check two days out allows a little bit of time to fix any issues that may arise. It’s much easier to go buy a couple of gels or track down something that you can’t find without the pressure of a last minute dash and a race the next day. 

1 day out

Recheck, lay out you gear, and set things up for race morning. Yes, you just checked everything and, hopefully, took care of any last minute issues, picked up your bib, now double check everything. Get everything ready to go for the morning so that you can be on auto pilot. You don’t want to have to try to remember things or pull things together the morning of your race. 

Try to get some sleep- This is such a hard one. the excitement and nerves can easily get the best of us. Remember that you’ve done everything you can do at this point, you’ve checked and rechecked your gear and set up for the morning. Also, if you don’t get that much sleep the night before, that’s actually pretty normal and you can still have a great race.

Race day

Execute the plan. Most importantly, have fun!