Pre Run

I like to get up early on race morning, give myself time to have a decent breakfast and digest, hydrate, let the coffee do its work, get myself organized, deal with any last minute snags that come up. I'm not the most organized person in the world so I make up for it by giving myself lots of time to get things figured out.

The downside of this system is that I often end up with lots of spare time and the caffeine, having done it's work on my digestive system, combined with the sugar in the Gatorade, which I'm drinking to top up my electrolytes, makes me a little jumpy. sometimes there are pre-race nerves in there too! On top of that I'm a little paranoid and mildly OCD so I tend to start going over the race details and walking around the house in ever faster and tighter circles. If I'm not careful I find some other outlet for my energy, like reorganizing my bookcase, and end up feeling that I'm required to finish that and suddenly finding that I'm running late.

For a triathlon I can usually calm myself down by going through my packing list and ensuring I have everything,. There's a lot of stuff to bring to a tri and I'm fairly particular about how I pack it and how I set up my transition so I can get absorbed in that and work off the pre-race jitters. Call it my little OCD pre-race ritual

That doesn't work so well before a run, however. After getting dressed the list of stuff to bring isn't really long enough to achieve much: Shoes? Check. Hat? Check.

On that note I'm going to head out. The plan is to bike to work, which is a block from the start line, so that I can leave my gear there, use the bathrooms and generally have an island of calm before heading out into the sea of people. I might get some filing done while I'm at it!

Wish me luck!

PS - Where's my hat?