T - 8 Days

So, for those of you who one day may read this, wondering what to expect the week before race day, allow me to share my latest:

1) Hydrate. At this point you should be drinking enough water to hydrate your full 42km...yes, a week before. Our trainer put it this way "If you aren't waking up at 3am to relieve yourself, you are not drinking enough water yet".

Our trainer has also told us that we should be getting in some good sleeps to store up our body's energy. Unfortunately, I keep waking up in the middle of

the night to pee.

2) Carbo-load. This is an important one for me to include here, as I know that my family reads this blog regularly. What is carbo-loading exactly? Well, it is the ingestion of foods, high in carbohydrates (which convert into energy in your body) pre-race so that you have stores of carbohydrate-based energy on race day.

It is NOT eating anything with carbohydrates, as things like potato chips have high carbohydrates but do not count. This is because, if the carbohydrates are made up of too much sugar or has a high amount of fat, it will have a negative effect on your system. Sugar drains, fat slows.

So, carbo-loading: pasta

NOT carbo-loading: ice cream

carbo-loading: high fiber breads

NOT carbo-loading: creme caramel

carbo-loading: rice

NOT carbo-loading: chocolate brownies

carbo-loading: fresh fruits

NOT carbo-loading: chocolate cake that happens to have a few healthy raspberries in it

For those of you not part of my family - yesterday was my birthday. My family attempted to plump me up with several sweet treats, which in turn, slowed this morning's run significantly.

3) If you are running with a charity, you will start to get all sorts of goodies. Today I received my technical shirt, as well as specialty luggage tags. We've also recently received our itinerary, and all of the rules of the marathon.

This is very intimidating and in me, at least, has created a permanent state of anxiety which may not fully leave me until the 13th.

4) Last minute realizations - this is the time when you start getting hit with the 'oh crap, I need to finish breaking in my new shoes', or 'shoot, I need to pick up some energy', or my favourite realization of Jeff's 'you mean we have to be up at 2am on race day?'

Overall, right now is a very intense time. We're trying to get ready for the holidays and make sure that everything is in order before we leave and planned to a T for when we get back. We're trying to remember to pack everything, and pack it in the right place (always pack your running gear in your carry-on as you don't want the airline to lose your running shoes!). This is challenging since I work right up to the day we leave - which is a 5am wake-up call kind of day.

We're trying to get out for runs, while trying to remember something as simple as getting some American money for souvenirs!

Add to all of that yesterday's birthday party....

I kept the day mellow partly out of necessity - alcohol 8 days before the race will probably not sit well.

The time spent with my family was well needed and very refreshing, and my mom's cake gave me a good laugh. If you can't tell in the picture, that is me, across the finish line, Jeff, still running, and my whole family cheering us on.

Everyone was thinking of the race it seemed, and that was well reflected in the gifts - my Aunt got me some warm gloves to finish my training runs, my cousins got me a gift card for the Running Room for last minute supplies and iTunes for an audiobook to listen to on the course, my parents had already bought my replacement shoes and some other race related items but also pitched in some American $ to buy a memento of the experience, and the greatest gift was two little pewter feathers from my younger sister. Each one was tied to a ribbon, so, as my mom explained, I could tie them to my shoes on race day to help me fly, lift me up when I wanted to crawl, and remind me that my sister was there beside me.

What an amazing time this is right now - the anxiety, and the energy surrounding us is phenomenal. It's hard to believe that it's all coming to its peak, that everything we have done so far is leading us to this one final moment that will soon be past us.

So now, beyond all of these preparations that I have to keep in the back of my head, the last thing I must do is work on remembering - every - little - detail.

Gearing up

Goodness I have missed writing my blog!

Life gets pretty busy this time of year, as we all know. Let me tell you - although I had become quite practiced in making time to run, fundraise, and blog when I was busy with work, adding in the holidays has made it an extra special challenge.

My mom came to visit for a whole week not too long ago and although I did get out for a run while she was here, I didn't get out again that week. It was too hard to leave her alone for me to run, and well, the bike tires were flat, so she couldn't really keep up.

My challenge now is trying to get all of my holiday gifts made while finishing my training. Not to mention, it's getting cold outside! Throw all that into a pot with extended mall hours for the holiday season, and my time becomes very limited.

The reality is though, the marathon is less than two weeks away. Unbelievable - I can't believe it's come so fast.

I never got in my last major distance run of 35.5 km - I couldn't justifiably take 6 hours out of my few hours off to do it. By the time I could get out to run, even a portion of it, I was in to tapering.

Tapering - reducing your mileage pre-marathon to rest your body.

Mom got me my new shoes as an early birthday present and I've been doing my best to break them in before we leave for Hawaii.

In the meantime, Jeff's knee is still incredibly painful for him to run on - but I have finally succeeded in getting him to go see a physiotherapist. Hopefully it's not all bad news because the usually chipper Jeff has been pretty cranky over the injury. I completely understand though since he's starting to question

whether he will be able to run on race day.

Fundraising wise we've almost broken $9,000 which is phenomenal! Hopefully we can find the time over the holidays to sell some poinsettias or something and even reach $10,000.

In the meantime, we're starting to get information directly from the marathon, like our race numbers (6016 for me and 6031 for Jeff), information on a race DVD (which my folks have insisted on

purchasing so they can watch me sweat, heave, pant, maybe even vomit, at interesting points along the course), and even a little note about the services available during the race.

Apparently, there is live tracking on race day.

I will have to investigate this further.

The only thing I haven't done that I want to in lead up to race day is to put together my playlist. This is being put off because I am asking for a big gift from all of our followers - words of motivation.

Jeff and I have asked for these in the past without great success but this is the culmination of all of our work in about 12 days. So, if you have a built-in microphone in your computer, google how to record a sound clip on your computer. Record me a greeting and email it to me. Without listening to the clips ahead of time, I will place them all between songs along my playlist so that I get a few each mile along the course. The plan is, if I'm ready to give up at the 39th kilometre, the song will end and next thing I will hear is my brother, or my co-worker, or YOU saying "Annie, what are you doing, you are unbelievable, keep it going!"

So here is my rules for these clips:

1) Make sure to tell me who it is. Although I may love each of you profusely, I'm not the greatest with recognizing voices.

2) Aim for 30 seconds to 1 minute if you can

3) You can just read a quote, you can tell me you are proud, you can tell me something to make me laugh or smile, you can tell me you think I am crazy, you can tell me to not stop running - just tell me anything you think I would like to hear at Mile 1 or Mile 26 in 30 degree weather. :)