Welcome back to Snack Cast everybody. Today we’re continuing with race day prep. Today’s the big day! You signed up and trained and never thought this day would come. You did your pre-race prep the week before tapering off your runs.
 So, going to bed the night before or even waking up? How does it begin? When you wake up? Oh, for me, oh, gosh, probably an hour, it depends on if there’s travel time. But if there is travel time aside, you don’t want to have too much time because then you’re sitting around doing nothing. And there’s nothing worse than that, right? Like getting to the event too early. And then you’re just pacing. Because you have that I don’t care how well you try and you’re still gonna have that anxiety of like, let’s go.
You want to stretch and warm up a little bit, you know, do some bouncing around whatever. Then you got the other aspects of, do you eat before? Do you not eat before? Depends on what the event is? I would say your smaller events, your typical 5k I don’t think you have to worry about nutrition a whole heck of a lot. So hang on, hang on, you’re jumping to breakfast. But if you’re gonna wake up, I’m talking about a time when you need to tack on a certain amount of time for it’s gonna be crazy. Even if it’s a small event like 100 people. 100 people still trying to park as close as they can to the start or finish line. You need a buffer of time, I guess for your travel time. You don’t want to be getting there trying to rush right? You’re going to eat something, maybe you’re gonna want to swing through Starbucks anything near the event? It’s going to be busier than a regular day. That’s correct. Especially your big events. My goodness, everyone’s trying to pee or poop at McDonald’s before they get down there. So take all that kind of into account that whatever your normal timeframe would be. You gotta tack on for a variety of elements. But you don’t want to tack on too much. To your point. Right.
So, like the wakeup time, you have to figure out alright, am I going to eat normally? How soon after I wake up do I need to use the restroom? If I am going to eat breakfast, how is that going to affect my workouts? And you know, there’s an old saying nothing new on race day. And that means no new sneakers. That means no new diet. That means no new nothing on race day. You’ve done this all along. Stick to it. Shorts you’ve already run in. Definitely not new socks, you’ll blister.
We didn’t talk about that, like the Body Glide and that type of stuff. You know, you’re gonna want to prep and make sure you have that for chafing. If you’ve never looked up bleeding nipples on race day, my goodness, it is horrible. Oh, you see these poor people, talking about half marathons and marathons here when they crossed the finish line. And if you’re one of those people make sure you mostly dudes, I mean, because let’s be honest, we don’t wear bras, right? The constant up and down on the shirt, it’s like 600 grit sandpaper for an hour, two hours. Although, you shouldn’t be figuring that out on race day. If you’ve done your proper training, and you’re out running for two hours, during the course of a week, you will have known that you would tend to chafe and to certainly do something about it.
Ok, so waking up, getting your food, and checking the weather. Yes, check the weather on race day. That’s a great point. You might need a poncho. Whatever you do bring, make sure it’s disposable. Don’t bring your best jacket. Correct. We talked about the Rock and Roll Marathon that we did and how many people left their clothing around and afterward it gets picked up for homeless people. You won’t get it back. You’re not getting it. You’re not gonna go find it on the course after you’re done. And it stinks to carry anything while you’re running. I agree.
On longer events, you probably want some kind of nutritional supplementation. You want to make sure that you packed a little fanny pack or some people wear arm bags, the water hydration stuff. Again, I think that any of that stuff should be understood well in advance. You’ve done enough training that matches up with the event that you’re about to do that you shouldn’t be figuring this out on race day. So the supplements, are things like Goo or Gatorade or any of those types of gel packs. The other thing you can check especially for the longer events is where the water stops are on the course. Some might have bananas out on the course. We have a good friend that did his first full triathlon. You remember, Jamie? And he’d mentioned they had a thing of M&M’s. I think it was in the middle of the road at some point toward the end. And he was just like it was whatever he could get. But that’s a really long event.
So waking up, allow for time. I think that’s probably the big one to me is not to be disgusting, but it’s the poop pee. I don’t want to do it in a porta potty. Oh, no, no, no. I mean, you don’t want to stop in the middle of your run and find a porta potty right there in a bush. Yeah, there’s nothing worse than that. Whatever your normal routine is. For me, it’s a pretty straightforward couple of cups of coffee and I’m off to the races. But whatever your routine is incorporate that into your morning I can’t believe we’re talking about the but it’s real.Â
All right, dude, we’ve been all over the place and this one, but it was good. It’s all about trying to plan the best you can, take the knowns, and account for the unknowns. Well, they’re unknown. They aren’t they are. But have fun this is what you’ve trained for.
Questions, comments, concerns, or criticisms, email us at snackcast@yes.fit or hit us up in the group. And other than that, keep moving soon.
