Dress Rehearsing

Today, with just seven days to go before the big day, I am dress rehearsing. So I got up at 05:30 (hubby is away on a business trip to some Middle Eastern sand box so I wasn't disturbing him, though I will next week!), had my porridge, got dressed in full race kit, Vaselined my toes against blisters, and at 06:30 I got in the car and drove to the station. It takes 7 minutes and I was there in plenty of time to have bought my ticket and got on the 06:57 to Waterloo. This would have got me to Waterloo at 07:55 (early Sunday mornings there are only slow stopping trains), with plenty of time to transfer across to Waterloo East for the 08:19 to Blackheath, arriving at 08:33. That's the plan for next week anyway! For today I came back from the station, did some laundry, emptied the dishwasher, Skyped with my sister in New Zealand, had a chat with my Dad in Cyprus and am generally mooching about killing time. I am currently "just arriving at the Blue Start", eating a banana - the last solid food before the start - and sipping some Lucozade. I have a bit more time to kill until 10:00 (probably go to the loo a couple of times and double check I have everything in my race day bum bag), when I shall head on out the door, walk to the end of the road pretending to be in the Mass Start shuffle to the line, and then run for 70 minutes. (Obviously I am not dress rehearsing the whole day...)

This is my last "long" run, then next week I have just 30 minutes tomorrow, 20 minutes on Wednesday and 10 on Saturday. I had 10 minutes yesterday too, and wasn't entirely sure what the point was at this late stage as I reckoned I'd barely even break a sweat, but once I started off I realised that the point is to remind your legs how to run! Having been tapering for two weeks (even though I did run 10 miles last weekend) it almost feels like I've got out of the habit, and for the first couple of hundred yards or so yesterday I was all over the place, rocking and rolling, huffing and puffing like a beginner. But fortunately that settled down after a bit and then I was ok. The 10 minutes turned into 16 by the time I'd got round the block but I took it very gently and was indeed barely sweating. I have no idea how far I ran as I didn't bother to take William with me; I could Google it but it doesn't matter. In the general scheme of the hundreds of miles I have run since October yesterday is a tiny drop in the ocean. Maybe I should add them all up. I'll let you know.