Hello from Scottsdale, Arizona where I am hydrating like crazy (especially in this dry desert air) and deep into a three day carb load in preparation for the Every Woman’s Marathon tomorrow!

I’m going to get really real right away. I wish I could say that I was feeling excited and confident about the race but I am mostly feeling anxious and off. This whole marathon build has been full of unexpected twists and turns – both with things going on in life and how I’ve felt physically. It feels like a stark contrast to how I felt going into marathon weekend last year in Savannah where I had an ideal training cycle and dream race day.

I am trying to remind myself that I am in a completely different place this year with endurance and time on my feet than I was last year when I trained for Every Woman’s Marathon. In the last 12 months I have run a marathon, spent multiple days/weekends on the trails covering 30-50 miles at a time and completed a six-day, 120 mile stage race across the Rockies. And to be fair, in this training push I have run 2-3 times a week most weeks and gotten in long runs of 10, 12, 15, 16 an 18 miles along with two 13 mile trail run days. It wasn’t perfect – I didn’t follow a traditional plan and I didn’t get my 20 milers or much speed/tempo work in but I know I’ll finish and be okay. It won’t be a PR but it won’t be a death march either.

Mostly, I’m bummed because I’ve been feeling pretty run down this week and woke up this morning unable to deny that I have a cold. It’s a little bug that I picked up from Finn. Not the worst cold of my life, but I don’t feel amazing. I have a super scratchy throat and my body feels zapped of energy. I am spending today resting, fueling and hydrating and praying for the best tomorrow.

Here’s a look at what I packed to support fueling, hydrating and carb loading.

• G.1.M Sport – I’l drink one or two servings today and one tomorrow morning before the race. It’s got 20 grams of carbs and 350 mg of sodium per serving. I like the lemon lime flavor and the only way to drink this is in a blender bottle. It’s really hard to get fully mixed and is gloppy if you don’t use the bottle.
• Graham crackers – holy grail for carb loading
• Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal
• Cheez Its
• Bobo Bar – will probably eat this with a banana for breakfast tomorrow morning since options are super limited that early in the AM and one bar has 360 calories and 54 grams of carbs. I also might try to find a bagel somewhere but I just really don’t like them untoasted/cold and couldn’t fit my mini toaster into my luggage this year. I will also probably take a Honey Stinger waffle with me to eat right before the start.
• Skratch and Honey Stinger Energy Chews – if I use these it will be today or tomorrow AM. I won’t carry them on the run.
• Maurten gels (my absolute favorite gel) and Huma double electrolyte gels (my second favorite gels and I mix these in for the sodium and 25 mg of caffeine you can get in some of them) for the race
• LMNT and Liquid IV – for pre-hydrating
• Tea bags

Travel to Phoenix yesterday was a breeze. I dropped Finn at school at 7:40a and headed straight to the airport for my 9:20a flight. Luckily, there was no traffic getting to the airport and no lines once I was there. I even had time to mobile order a coffee to grab on the way to my gate.

I had a window seat and had to climb over my two seat mates twice to go to the bathroom during the four-hour flight. It amazes me that people can not have to get up even once in this amount of time! I have an aisle seat for the return trip as I know I’ll be hydrating a ton and want to stretch my legs.

I landed in Phoenix just before noon local time and it was a short 15 minute Uber to my hotel in Scottsdale. I was able to check in early so I dropped my bags in my room and then had lunch at the hotel restaurant.

I sat by the pool for about an hour and dozed, which was nice – and hot! It was 86 degrees here yesterday and the sun is super strong! Makes me grateful that marathon morning is calling for a chance of rain and some clouds. Hopefully it will hold off on getting too warm too fast.

I am not one for shake out runs but since I was two days out from the race and felt like I needed to get some energy moving around in my body, I did an easy three-miler around Old Town. I spent more time pausing my watch to look at the map than I did running but it was nice to move a bit.

I’m going to wrap it up here! I need to get showered and head to the Expo. I’m also going to spend some time meditating and working on mindset this afternoon – as well as rolling out on my balls. I will see y’all on the other side of this marathon – should be an interesting race recap!

QUESTIONS 

Have you ever felt less than prepared heading into a marathon? How did it go? 

Do you do shake out runs before half or full marathons? 

Have you visited Arizona or the Scottsdale area?