Nashville marathon prep

Listen up, e-people. You're going to really learn a lot about race prep from this post. It's going to be super useful for all of the people who like to feel better about their own race prep. You know how when someone else does something really crappy, you can feel better about your own mediocrity/awesomeness. Well, that's pretty much the purpose of this blog, to boost everyone's running self esteem. No matter what level you are at in running, you will find that at least 110% (it's all about the impossible here) of the time you are better prepared than me.

So here are the how-tos of the ill prepared:

1. Celebrate three birthdays in the second half of April and eat as many cupcakes, regular cakes, spoonfuls of raw cake batter, and bowls of delicious ice cream as possible. Replace one out of three meals with one of the aforementioned options.

2. Don't go to bed before midnight on any night. That goes for the whole month. Except for that one night I tried to watch a movie with my husband and fell asleep during the opening scene.

3. Forget about drinking extra water for a couple of weeks. Drink a few sips at the water fountain after your gym runs, then call it good for the rest of the year.

4. Pack everything in your race bag except for underwear. Luckily all of my running clothes have underwears built in, but I guess I forgot that my jeans don't come with the built-ins.

5. Pull crazy stunts like tweaking your knee in your weekly volleyball match-up. I go into the game knowing that a good tweaking is likely because my signature move is throwing myself on the ground every time a ball nears me. Who needs bump and spike when you can have awkward face dives?

6. Tweak your knees even more at the nightly dance party.

And, yes, she definitely got her moves from me. 

7. Almost crash the car on the way to the marathon because you are driving through possible tornadoes in Tennessee. Just this time last year, we were shocked as we drove by (on our way to the Country Music Half Marathon 2011) the freshly tornado-damaged areas of northern Alabama. So tonight when I heard the radio tornado warning for the exact area I was driving through in Tennessee, I was pretty nervous. It got rough out there, to the point where I couldn't see the road, but we made it. All for the love of running. 

But note that I did not do anything as ridiculous as this Playmobil renegade redneck.

So even though I flaked preparation, I have a couple of things going for me:

1. I'm cycling through some colon blow. There will be no bathroom emergencies on race day.

2. My family will be cheering me on along the course! I carry my iPhone so they can ping it and find me during the race. Hopefully I see them a lot the second half of the race. The first half will be too crowded.

3. This is my first marathon running with my Garmin. Let's see if that little dude can help me out. 

4. I'm having a lucky week. I won a Wrist Saver from Too Tall Fritz and some New Balance 890s from The Boring Runner. Please let this race fall under the Lucky Week category. 

5. My motto for the race is: if you can't PR, just have fun. Let's see if weather.com can help me out with that. I've seen weather predictions from 79-85 degrees for the high. Currently 84 is predicted to be the high on Saturday.