From Taper to Marathon Start Line: Mastering the Last 48 Hours

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Physiology of Endurance running podcast. Today we're continuing with our marathon theme where we're gonna cover the 24, 48 hours before marathon race day. What you should be doing in terms of training, nutrition, the car blows. Maybe the psychology may as well how to get out of your own head. Not sure if we're experts on that, but we'll see what we'll refer to our own line for that part, what is his personal one-to-one psych. But yeah, just continuing that theme and hopefully prepping in time for those who got Manchester coming up this weekend and London the following weekend we got Boston as well. - Newport as well. - Newport Marathon, yeah. That's this weekend too, some big Marathons, big Marathons. - Yeah, yeah, Marathon season isn't it? - It's the best time of year. - Best time of year, Marathon season. - I guess talking about Marathons, should we talk about saw? - Yeah, we can talk about saw if you like. Can I say yes, we but I guess we better, haven't we? So, do you want to kick us off? - Yeah, so saw's got a bunch of events running in the build up to London just announced, I think about half an hour before we started recording this, which is good timing. So they have a pop up on, well, Thursday to Saturday and then Monday to Tuesday after London as well. So, if you're hanging around in London after the Marathon, which a lot of people do, definitely go check out saw afterwards. It's pretty, I don't know if you've done it down, but you can, you walk down Oxford Street and you've got like Nike, New Balance, Adidas, and a lot of people in there, with their medals still on the Monday. I think New Balance quite often does like medal engraving. - Yeah, we're a title sponsor aren't they? So yeah, it's back there. - So you see a lot of people shuffling down the road with their medals on. And yeah, definitely recommend going and checking out saw as well. And then they also have the London tune up, which is another one of these progression or drop runs that we were fans of. They did one at New York, I think as well. So this is on Friday morning, seven a.m. start and starts at five minutes a K. It's 12 kilometers and every two kilometers the pace increases by 10 seconds a K. And so the last two K is all gas no breaks. I just said to you before we started recording, I was like, oh, we should get to this and then we saw the time. And I don't think we're gonna be in London at seven a.m. on Friday. - Unfortunately not. It was probably not what I would recommend if you're running them out from. - Sounds really cool. I'd love to be part of this on a weekend when I'm not racing London on Sunday. But yeah, I like the concept. So yeah, definitely head down there. I mean, I've always been putting the kit through its paces 'cause he had his trail race this weekend. I think he's just about on one piece. Did you survive? - I'd just about survived. Still slightly putting together my thoughts. What are we now? Three and a half, four days later. About the race. But yeah, I wore what did I wear? I wore a previously white pair of sore socks. They've been through the wash once. They're not quite back to white. That's nothing against the socks. That is the bogs that I waited through. I think I counted. I think I went up to my knees in different bogs six times during the race. So they won white socks at the end. But at the start, I think I probably had the best shoe sock combo on the start line. And then I also wore the sore trail half-tights which were very good. So I had three 40-gram gels in the front pouch and then a 30-gram gel in either side pouch. And then we had to carry our phones for the race. So I had mine in the back pocket and didn't have any issues at all with carrying that much in the shorts. And then I could take some weight out of my pack, which was really, really useful. I really, it was just really convenient to get to a gel in your waistband. - I was gonna say, I actually, I, in some ways prefer them to the marathon half-tights because the pouches at the front, so you can very easily just pick it out. You're doing some fun more behind to see, actually, what am I getting here? Where's the pocket? Quite so much. I really rate them. I just love the elastic on the back as well. I've used it so every time I'm just chucking a jacket in or chucking a top in, it's just really versatile. - Yeah, they were really good. And there was a couple of sort of sore supported athletes in the race as well in the same kit as well. So, yeah, I think it was running as well. - Yeah, he had a good run. Yeah, they're using the kit as well on the trousers. And yeah, I was clambering down sort of rock faces, essentially, at points. And the shorts are in one piece. They survived sort of 50K of running around the lake district. So I can't recommend them enough. Like they were comfortable and they made my race experience and I guess like race execution better as well, which is, you can't really ask for more of kit, can you? And I think they looked okay. I think they looked okay. So, yeah, you can't ask for much more, can you? - Very good bit of kit, definitely worth an investment. I mean, I just plug one more way to sore kit. I took my graphing best, which I've just released for a spin for the first time, so we had to get some sun last week. I took it up the track to bed, I track up to Ponty. And he had Don's my graphing best for the first time. I with me and Jake taking turns on the reps. I Jake Smith taking the lead on these K reps. And he's in his all Nike, Nike pro kit vest. And I was in the sore vest. Mine definitely looked better. Definitely looked better, big, big sign of our vest. It just looks really, really cool. I like the material again is another level of lightness. - Yeah, it's really good. Definitely recommend that as well, especially as we approach potentially some better weather. - Yeah, it's a time to refresh the kit. - I definitely did refresh the kit. - I think is the sun starts to come out. - Yeah, yeah. So yeah, thank you as always. So, yeah, check them out. If you're going to London, especially check them out. Should we quickly mention Patreon as well? - Yep. - I was gonna say, yeah, I'll be properly breaking down the trail race with Jen, who was at Rotterdam coming up at some point this week. And then, yeah, Dan and Jake Smith are into the taper, really, Dan's telling me he's done 10 K less today. Still done 30 odd K, but 10 K less training. - And K less than last Tuesday, 44 K last Tuesday. Jake has got so much energy. He's so up for this marathon. He's gonna run really well, I think, as long as he keeps his head, but I mean, he's got a good plan in place. He's gonna absolutely fly. He's a ridiculous, ridiculous shape. - His mindset has changed now. He's become a dog dad, I think. - He's grown up, isn't he? He's grown up. - A boy's grown up. - Yeah, he has a little old Jakey. - Yeah, yeah, it's been really cool. - Yeah, hearing Jake's thoughts as well, leaning into London, and yeah, I'm really excited. I'm should be on the sidelines, watching both of you have a good racist. So I'm pretty excited to see that as well. - He'll be a bit further up the road for me, I think. As long as he's having a good day. - Yeah, but yeah, there's a link in the bio. So check out Patreon, if you're interested in hearing that. There's what you're on nine episodes. You've done eight episodes, and there'll be about 10, 11 episodes of you and Jake. And me and Jenna just weekly talking about our training. So loads of extra content on there as well. - Yeah, nice little community's brewing there. So if you're only part of that, go check out Patreon. So let's get into the topic of the day, then. Before eight hours, pre-Yamara fan. And I think this is where it can all unravel. If you actually haven't got a bit of a plan in place and people, it's also when you're second guessing every decision, it's so easy to just question everything to the most obvious details that actually aren't significant. So I think really coming up with a plan for the 48 hours before to make sure you don't go down that wormhole, that spiral of everything just unraveling. And by the time you get to the start line, you've just spent so much nervous energy on all these minutia that don't really matter. So that's what we're going to cover today. - Yeah, yeah. And I guess sort of the starting point probably makes sense, but the running side of it, we will cover that first. So we have a whole episode on tapering, which maybe we'll link 'cause this is the end of the tape right, the last, probably last two runs you do. I don't know if I'd be doubling two days out from a math and I think I guess the underlying theme is just trying to keep things normal, but obviously we're a significantly reduced load, I think is that. probably the headline for the running right? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's worth highlighting that taper episode we have done previously because we were going to go and re-record one and realise actually we did that a year ago, didn't we? So we'll link that in the show notes so if you haven't listened to that already, that sort of covers the final two weeks, but we're sort of into that period now anyway, especially if you are gracing. I hope this weekend in Manchester or Newport, we've got Boston coming up on Monday. So yeah, but like the last two days, I'm definitely thinking if you normally run every day, run the Friday and Saturday, but as you said, keep figuration pretty low. I mean, what would you normally do in the two days before? Day before, so actually, I guess maybe talking about the planning, like I tend to plan even the last three weeks like from the race day back, I think that's an easier way of looking at it if that helps as well. People think about it, but yeah, so the day before maybe 20 minutes, I've done strides before as well as part of that, but I don't really think that adds anything for me personally, but that's just someone that hasn't had a, I don't know, like a development into the marathon of doing strides. If you're someone like Jen that has done a lot of shorter races, we're probably doing strides as sort of, you know, like the pre-me day before the race that might just be sort of a psychological comfort as much as anything, but for me it's 20 minutes the day before and then two days before it's 30 minutes. My sort of thinking and really the thinking for the last at least week is, does doing any more add to like benefit me on race day? And a week out, doing, for me running an hour, like running my normal hour, doesn't make me more fatigued for the race generally and probably actually psychologically keeps me tracking in the right direction. Like maybe going down to 30 minutes a week out would be beneficial, but actually just, I think very much depends on what's your starting point, because like, like we said just there, I'm two weeks, what are my 12 days out from London, I still around 34K on my Tuesday, but actually, historically, but last few months I've been running 40K plus on my Tuesday, so it's relative. And if you're normal easy run, it's 30 minutes, then maybe you only want to go out for 10, 15 minutes, because your body has got a custom to a certain level of running. And I also think if you are someone who is normally doing, I would typically do two hours of running on an easy day between sessions with a double, I think if I drop down to 30 minutes, a week, 30 minutes a day from a Monday, seven days out from London, I'd feel pretty terrible by the time I got to race day. So I just think it's worth bearing in mind just by, if you're used to doing higher volumes of training, you don't need to reduce the absolute mileage quite as much as if you're someone who's doing a bit less. Yeah, yeah, I think it's yeah, trying to, trying to keep some semblance of normality, but with that thinking of, yeah, does this, does this impact race day? And if you, like, if you plan this, if you're not deciding on the day, you can probably come up with quite a reasonable thought of how much you should be running. Yeah, whereas yeah, if you're, you know, I guess another theme for this whole episode is, if you're deciding, if you're making these decisions two days out from the mouth and it's probably a lot more likely that you're going to get it wrong or do something that might impact the race. Yeah, absolutely. And just, it's just not making stupid decisions. So I've been telling all my athletes this week, it's just, you don't need to do anything amazingly, you just need to don't not make a stupid decision. And if you actually give yourself a time to think about it, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty easy, but it's when you're making decisions under pressure in the moment where you, where things do start to unravel. So yeah, I'm normally in favor of running both days because I know that I feel pretty rubbish if I take a day off, I feel better having moved. And if you're used to taking rest days once a week, probably continue to take your rest day once a week. And if that would normally fall on the Friday or Saturday, then probably keep doing that because that's what your body's used to just trying to keep for routine for as much as you can for both physiological and psychological aspects. Yeah, yeah. And then I guess, I guess like both of us are pretty clear in agreement, like not doing a session, maybe some strides, but your sort of race week session should be done way early in the week. It should just be easy running. Yeah, I like a Wednesday pre-race session. I think three days of easy running after that, and that Wednesday session is going to be so chilled anyway. I'm not me doing a little bit of stuff but marathon pace and then maybe a bit slightly faster. The classic I've been giving my athletes recently is a three by five minutes at marathon pace, which would feel pretty comfortable. Hopefully it doesn't always one race week, but a three by five minutes comfortable four by a minute a bit faster at 10k sort of pace. So you get the legs moving a bit, gives you a bit more confidence, I think like that neuromuscular loading is just a little bit more intense, but the actual cost is so low because you're doing it for a minute. Yeah, I think that tends to make you feel good, but you can probably only do too much on that last session. Yeah, yeah. Again, like we said, the week of just be thinking, does this benefit me and race day or is this going to actually negatively impact what you can do on a race day? Yeah, I think people attempting to do is actually they're feeling a bit fresher. So you go, you know what, I'm just going to run this easy, but now easy is feeling like 30 seconds a K faster. And I try and persuade you not to do that. I just keep it. You can run 10 seconds a K faster. I don't think that's very meaningful, but don't just go right. I'm feeling good now. I need to go. I'm going to make the most of it. So just looking for confidence, looking for fitness, don't start comparing your heart rates again, like just in the final three days, don't go in on what's my heart rate like for given pace, don't worry about that sort of stuff. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I think there's quite a big like psychophysiological element. There's also the fact that you've reduced training. No, I think, especially if you're doing like quite high volume, you probably actually find your heart rate is going to be a bit higher anyway, because you're probably not as suppressed for your sort of daily running. And probably also just got quite a lot of like state anxiety because of the race. I think most of us would be running around thinking about the race that's coming up sort of impossible to avoid. Maybe if you go run with someone else that benefits you and can take your mind off of what you're about to do. But yeah, generally, yeah, I wouldn't be looking at heart rate. I'd be the last thing I'd probably want to look at like the date before. Yeah, yeah, just go and run. Just one last thing before we move on to like maybe hydration and nutrition more generally. I do quite like strides per day before, but I tend to just go instead of doing like classic 10 to 15 second strides. I prefer something like two times 30 seconds, an only marathon pace off of like a 60 second job, 90 second job. So you're not even like heart rate is not going to get up. You're not actually running that fast, but sometimes just a bridge for gap between three easy that has been three days since your last session. Just to keep things ticking over. I don't, again, I don't think it adds anything, but it feels good to do. And I think it just, especially if you've been traveling as well, like if you've been flying into somewhere and you actually, you've probably done your pre-array session before you travel. And then you've been sat on a plane, you've been sat on a car for lots of hours just to actually more get that mobility back and that range of motion back by just extending the, you know, your stride length a little bit. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, definitely. We're going to come on traveling a bit. And I think that that probably actually impacts a lot of this as well. I think the other thing I'd add, which hopefully bridges on to the next topic is I think a big mistake you can make with the running in the two days before is going for a run and then like, especially if you're in a new location, not eating for a decent amount of time afterwards. I think that's, that's probably a bigger mistake than, you know, I would rather someone ran five minutes longer and then immediately had something to eat than ran five minutes less and then didn't eat anything for two hours because you're sightseeing or you're just having a coffee and chatting to people. Yeah, that's very classic, isn't it? Like if you go to one of these shakeout runs, you've got on the tube to get there or you've gone on the bus or whatever to get to a starting point, then you've actually got a 3040 minute hour window between finishing that run and eating something. That's pretty not ideal. Yeah. And I think, I think in day to day training, you can get away with it, like, you know, maybe if you're doubling every day, then you probably need to be on top of it. But I think in this situation, this is one way you really should be eating as soon as possible after and there is a little bit of evidence to suggest that it's going to benefit my soul and liver glycogen restoration and especially the day before when you should be car-bloading but that's probably your primary aim of the day is to sort of finish the day with those glycogen stores as full as possible and you're actually making your life harder and potentially impacting that if you don't eat quick enough after. Yeah, just the last one, the last one on that I guess is for the obviously you want to do that last run on the Saturday in the morning. I don't wait until three o'clock, four o'clock. I would get it down as soon as I can to be honest and I probably would eat something before go and do the run then come back and have a proper breakfast. Yeah yeah yeah I'd agree yeah yeah I think I'm yeah again especially if you're waiting for a shakeout run like you know if you're someone you as well and you wake up you know you wake up at seven o'clock and the run's not till nine then by the time that's done that's a lot of the day gone a lot of the day wait you're going to hopefully be eating a lot of carbs it just makes your life a bit harder if you wait that long to eat. Yeah definitely definitely yeah cool so fast you're running basically keep it short keep intensity the same don't go too hard and you'll be fine don't ever think it. We're moving on to next. I can cardboard because I think that's probably probably the most important thing in terms of things that you can actively do to benefit your race. I think I'd also maybe things that you can actually put some of your energy and um and I don't know I don't say overthinking but overthinking into I'd say carb loading is is it maybe a useful use of that mental capacity um so we saw we've mentioned carb loading quite a lot and different episodes um but I guess we'll just quickly go through like the headline sort of things to do with carb loading um so you you want to be aiming for eight to twelve um grams of carbs per kilo of body weight um so if you pick the number in the middle like we're both around 60 kilos I mean we're we want to be eating 600 grams of carbs in a 24 hour period um and you want to be carb loading for 24 to sort of 36 to 48 hours before this is something where you probably want to practice it and find out what works better for you um and it may be also varies depending on like your actual I guess body mass if you're 85 kilos and you're trying to do 12 grams per kilo of body weight like that's a really massive amount of carbs and maybe you want to spread that out over 48 hours or maybe actually you just want to do 24 hours because it's so much food um yeah that's something to definitely practice with it I'd say yeah yeah and for me I never go about weighing this all out because inevitably you go and eat out somewhere and you've lost track of how much carbs you've you've taken in and like when I've yeah I've been having athlete meetings this week and I run up to these marathons I just encourage people to have look at their three eight three meals we're having in the day and just up the intake of carbohydrates in there but let's go about doing that and for this tasting that probably reduce the amount of fat protein fiber you're having on that plate as well because otherwise it just becomes a real mission because you're eating just huge huge volumes of food so I think that's important and just having more simple based carbohydrates but easily digestible so we're going white rice definitely white if you're going pasta my preference is rice if you're going pasta you're definitely going white pasta not whole meal pasta white bread that sort of thing to to fill out most of your plate and that way you are automatically going to increase your carb intake but then I would encourage the runner to have two or three other sources of carbohydrates that you're going to have throughout the day and I think liquids are a great way to do it I massive glass of orange juice with your breakfast I that's that's a good amount of carbs there I know of people who will have like an SIS-based fuel drink mix or a Morton drink mix the day before I I'll be at London in the elite hotel in London they're sponsored by Lucas Aida thinks and not last time I did it anyway they were just Lucas Aida on tap basically so you have a bottle of that that's a good amount of carbs and then I go to for food is a packet of Haribo 120 gram pack of Haribo something like a hundred grams of carbs something like that that's going that's going a very long way to meeting your carbohydrate intake without having to weigh anything yeah yeah it's I think I think I maybe focus on it a bit more and at the same time I'm not weighing food like there was a lot of estimation I guess in there you know I mean at the weekend like the first thing I ate after the run the day before the race was a cafe and I sort of just guessed you know roughly how many carbs are in that but the rest of the day I'm using things like sweets to sort of my my view of it is like the sweet sort of lay the foundation the sweet and like drink mixes and stuff and then things like pasta and rice and getting getting like that immediate sort of post run food at a cafe sort of then like fills that out as well and adds like food that isn't sweet yeah yeah I think what people make is just go right we're having sweets all day yeah and you just feel horrendous that's when people feel horrendous I think if you do it properly and you are balancing it out then you with with more not more because they start she carbohydrates being more more whole food items then it becomes much more tolerable if you're just going right I'm going to have I yeah frosted flakes for breakfast and then I'm going to have I just I biscuit sweets whatever all day you'll feel you will feel rubbish yeah I think I found it to the point where like alternate savory and sweet is another another sort of thing I found works for me um but yeah it's it's like I know I know the found I know how many carbs are in sort of the foundational things as I sort of think about it and then okay if if if that like pastry I got the cafe is like 50 grams or 80 grams of carbs it doesn't matter at that point because I know that I'm in the white ballpark anyway yeah I mean absolutely probably doesn't matter like it's a range I eat to 12 grams if you're somewhere in that range if you're 7.5 grams that's not going to make a difference if you're 4.5 grams you probably are under under selling yourself yeah yeah and I I think yeah the other you sort of said it but like having having less sort of bulky foods as well I think is is one thing I found again works um you know like of the sort of I guess like three or four main types of like day-to-day thing like rice is probably the most um like low bulk for high amount of carbs you can get whereas like I don't know like potatoes is probably the other end of the spectrum I feel like you have to eat a lot of potato to get the same amount of carbs so I would rather not do that because it's just good that that makes it a real challenge and not actually um not necessarily enjoyable but makes it really tough um see I just just thinking about what you're going to eat and especially if you're going overseas um that's where things like sweets do work because you know like when we went to Valencia it's like almost actually like enjoyable to go to like the the supermarket and see what what are the Spanish fairs ends of haribo um yeah they're with better range don't they they're better range but I know I know it's a bit of a uh a joe concertional media now but microwave rice is super super useful here because you can't just eat it raw it's cooked rice even if you don't have access to a microwave obviously it's more pleasant if you eat warmed up uh but that is a great tool to to um take with you that's why I had pre Valencia uh I like that I mean I managed to find it in super market in Spain but you can get this stuff anywhere I can't you and you just know it's safe microwave rice I know exactly what you're getting you can add some sort of topping with that and it's fast fast fine I mean for me I've always struggled with like GI distress during a race and like but for my first few marathons every time I was stopping in the port leu and it was awful horrendous but worse was I was doing bright in marathon the first time I did bright in marathon and I'd gone or I was I was being reckless I was young and reckless I think I was like 22 and I just went off the front I'm around solo the whole way but twice I'd just stop in a port leu and at 25 miles the guy in second caught me and I was just done and he ended up beating me by 10 seconds or something like that and yeah one of the officials afterwards the time keeper because they had like a time keeper watching like the leads um watching like the lead vehicle feeds they said oh yeah calculated you were reportedly for 50 seconds there which is exactly what I wanted to hear because I meant I was like a grand worse off, I think, from coming second instead of first. So, anyway, that's my main line to it. But the only thing that I found works is really cutting out the fat fiber. My primary, primarily the fiber, to be honest. And they use this in clinical settings, like a low residue diet, they call it. If you're doing certain surgeries, they may want you to have a completely empty GI tracks. That's what you're going to have for 24 hours beforehand. And that's completely cured. My dodgy stomach on Thursday. So just avoiding anything that is high in fiber. So basically no fruit, no veg. I have fruit juice. I might have like a tomato sauce, that's okay. Like a bizarre to her, that's all right. But nothing more exotic than that. So you basically eat like a toddler for 24 hours beforehand. But for me, that's made a huge, huge difference. Yeah, save the fruit and veg into after the race, I reckon. Exactly, yeah. The post-race banana hits way better. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And also waiting the food to earlier in the day. I think that's never a mistake people make is really just having a massive, massive dinner. Having right, I need tons of pasta, tons of rice. You know, eight o'clock at night, because they've not managed to get into a restaurant. And you wake up on a race day and you're so full, and you're so grosses. Whereas I would try to eat like a pretty normal dinner, because I've already got my carbs in breakfast, snack, dinner, never snack, and then yeah, done. I've found trying to be, like it's hard in some places, especially if you're having to eat out, but trying to stop eating 12 hours before I'm gonna wake up seems to work for me as like a bit of an anchor point of that's what I wanna stop. And that means, you know, if you're doing something that starts really early in the morning, so you're gonna be up way earlier, then when you finish eating, it reflects that. Obviously, you know, we experience that in Valencia and how hard that is to do when, you know, like the earliest you can book a table is like 8 p.m. We're just 12 hours before the race starts. But no, I agree. The amount of people I've seen at London that, you know, got up for food and like they're gonna meet at like eight o'clock. And I, you know, when I did it, I was in the hotel where I'd finished eating about two hours before that. I just saw, I can't imagine anything worse than, you know, being sat out with, also sat around with other people. They're also gonna race the next morning, just the amount of, yeah, nervous energy as well. I think would have, yeah, my head would have gone, but I definitely agree, yeah, finishing, finishing early, you know, like finishing eating early. And I'd also agree, having something fairly normal, I tend to just have like fairly normal pasta. And it might not be the biggest thing, like as big as I'd normally eat at home, but it's just, just finishes things off sort of quite normally. - I think not trying to have something too wacky, but simple, simple, but not too crazy. I carbonara, I think that's where I, my carbonara, that's a pretty normal meal that I would happily have. Or, yeah, but I had, you end up going to restaurants or like canteens or whatever. And I end up with, that's when I end up with weird concoctions, like rice and passata, or rice and tuna and passata or something like that, you know, tomato sauce, tomato and basil sauce or something. But, because sometimes you do need a bit dynamic. If you are going to be eating out somewhere, you haven't got case-wing facilities, you can't cook your own foods then. You have got to be a bit more reactionary, but try and investigate what options are you going to have, what are they going to be serving? And just take that anxiety out of it. - Yeah, I think the less control you have in terms of, like your cooking facilities, whether you're at home or in a hotel or an Airbnb, like you need to then plan more. And yeah, like, because we mentioned it a lot, especially if you're going to some of like Spain, like you have to, like have to figure out, it was like I spent a good like hour trying to find places near where I was staying in Valencia, and I couldn't find anywhere that, you know, opened before like half six, seven o'clock. And that's because that's the sort of local culture and you're part of that. So you need to plan ahead, not turn up on the day and be, 'cause that will come into one of our other tips, like you'll just end up walking around for hours, trying to find somewhere to eat. - You definitely want to avoid that. - Yeah, yeah. - I guess, I think that's the car bloat. Just, yeah, again, it doesn't have to be super complicated. Just make it, keep it, keep it, car up. You don't go away every now. I just think that's just a way for to increase anxiety. Just look at trying to slowly increase your uptake of, in all your meals, keep it simple. Nothing, avoid the whole meal stuff, the whole grain stuff, and you'll be fine. Absolutely fine. Hydration, you've taught us our next topic here. - Yeah. I think it's especially if it's gonna be warm at this is important, but I think this is one where it's actually something to think about more before the race than during the race. At least that's sort of what the evidence of hydration, especially hydration during races suggests is actually a lot of people over hydrate. So I think maybe, yeah, maybe if we talk about during the race and then I think be clear of why we're talking about focusing on this before the race. So during a race is actually, like during a marathon or longer race, it's normal and you probably should actually lose some weight. It's around two to five percent body mass sort of loss. And that isn't dehydration, it's because there's water bound to glucose. And when you use that, glucose and glycogen, when you use that for metabolism to fuel your running, that water is also part of that metabolic process. So you will lose some body weight during a race, but not lose or not have a performance impact. I think maybe people think about the performance impacts in terms of what you see from like cognitive studies. Like I definitely remember during exams. Hear it, like secondary school exams, hearing people saying, like, oh, if you're like 1% dehydrated, that's like an extrapolated percent reduction in sort of cognitive function. But having that same sort of dehydration during a running race isn't going to impact your performance. It's sort of part of a metabolic process. So during the race, you should just be drinking to fuel. That was sort of quite clear in a few of the papers I read sort of preparing for this was actually having a hydration plan is potentially detrimental 'cause you're going to end up being hyper hydrated. And that can actually then lead to maybe not necessarily direct performance reduction, but potentially like health issues. - Absolutely. I'm actually one of the biggest killers in marathons is something called hyponutriumia. Sorry, I know hyponutriumia, hyponutriumia, where your salt levels actually get diluted because you're drinking too much. And that can be really, really dangerous for cardiac regulation and just for everything. That sodium balance in our blood is something that's really tightly protected because if we get out of whack, it just affects all systems of a body. You get swelling in cells, you get visacemotic gradients where which drag water from one compartment to another and can cause a lot of damage. So you, as you said, oh, and it's completely, you should be losing weight of the course of a marathon and that doesn't necessarily mean you're dehydrated because say you lose two kilograms over that marathon, you could say, well, I've lost, you've lost that effectively means you've lost two kilos of sweat, two liters of sweat, but you're also gaining water by the breaking down of glycogen because so much water is stored with glycogen. So that says, second source of hydration, which will help maintain blood volume whilst you're running. So if you've finished your marathon, you're the same way as we were at the start, you've definitely drunk too much water. - Yeah, not that we're saying why yourself before and after a marathon, you know? - Hypothetically, you know? Jump on the scales as soon as you cross, as soon as you run down the mouth, jump on the scales, did I rude, was I 5% lighter or was I staying awake? Don't do that. - Hypothetically speaking, you are gonna lose weight, but that doesn't mean you're dehydrated. Even if you haven't replaced everything that you, that's you sweat it out basically. - Yeah, and you're gonna be taking in gels that have water in them as well. So you will still be hydrating, and then you sort of mentioned that like the next point is like salt intake and supplementation. Scenting salt during races isn't necessary. Again, as you mentioned, that sodium balance is really, really tightly controlled by your body and will reflect your hydration status pretty well. I found one review paper that said that they don't think you need to take supplemental salt even up to 30 hours and even in hot conditions. So, you know, for really long, ultra endurance events. And especially in tandem with the carb load that you've hopefully done, there will be more salt in your diet from that carb load, especially if you're eating savory things. Maybe if you're just eating haribo, maybe that's not the case, but there will be more salt in that food that will mean that your body has adequate sodium to get through a marathon. So, you don't necessarily need to do that either. And also, I guess the point, you know, long way to get there. But for the last two days before the marathon, you're sort of taking care of that sodium intake with just your regular eating. Maybe if you're making all of your own food, you might want to add a bit of salt to it. But if you're eating packs of microwaves, right, they've got plenty of salt in. If you're having, to be honest, be chronically too much salt. All the studies say that. I'm a more UE as in the carb load when you're obviously increasing your energy uptake, you're going to be eating more salt. So, like you said, unless you're literally making every single thing from scratch, you're going to be getting enough salt. So, I wouldn't be taking electrolytes in the 48 hours beforehand. It's just completely unnecessary. And electrolytes in themselves are a controversial topic, which I think, well, I let you finish your point, you're making, then we can get into that. - I mean, it's sort of the same vein with sodium intake as well. It doesn't seem, you know, if you're someone that suffers with cramps, it doesn't seem to be the thing that's causing it. We've sort of mentioned this before. There's, we always mentioned that footballer study right where they took footballers that were suffering from cramps. And it was only when they started doing strength training that the cramps stopped. It wasn't electrolyte intake, it wasn't salt intake. And that's the same, there's one study I found that had the runners with higher creatine kinase concentrations after 100 mile ultra were the ones that had more cramping. And that suggests more muscle damage. So it's not, the sodium didn't seem to impact cramping. So it's not something that you need to take for cramping either and you're going to be getting it in your day-to-day diet. - Absolutely. I mean, my brother-in-law, he's a sports doctor and he's worked in football and he came to me with an athlete who was just getting cramps all the time. I couldn't get through, we'd be fine in training, come to match day, cramps, like halfway, getting cramps. And they were pursuing all this sort of stuff. They were looking at, is she a really salty sweater? Is it a dehydration thing looking at a sweat loss? And I mean, I said, like looking at research, it's more and more likes to be a strength training issue, it's just a conditioning issue of the muscle itself. And she did some strength training and she didn't get any cramps anymore. Obviously that's a complete end of one case study, but the evidence is really not completely consistent but pretty, pretty scarce for the association between electrite intake and cramping. So, yeah, it then seems to be more, actually just muscle fatigue, muscle damage, which there is some association with the heat and cramping but it's not because you dehydrated necessarily, it's just that your muscle is working harder and it's probably less well-prefused by bloods and oxygen in those conditions because so much more is being distributed to the skin, so blood flow is redistributed to the skin. So, it's everyone putting electrites in everything and they're really hot topic. Everyone's selling electrites these days and the evidence for them being effective unless it is extreme heat and you're out there for a very long time, it's pretty poor. - Yeah, but we definitely need to do an episode on them. We are aware, we'll get an expert in and hopefully hear what we say. We have been, yeah, I have looked into this pretty comprehensively into this area and everything is screaming, very, very overrated. Don't waste your money on salt 'cause you could just sprinkle some salt more salt on your food and you good anyway if it wasn't issue. You don't need to be buying electrites. - Next up, I guess, sleep. I think this is a big one. So, I mean, it's obviously important, right? But I think just to emphasize that things like circadian rhythm is really important, especially if you're flying somewhere with different time zones. You know, there'll be lots of bits flying out to America for Boston. There was an observational study but looked at math and performance around daylight saving time, which we just had, right? That's the one where we go forward. So you lose an hour of sleep and that seemed to reduce performance by about 10 minutes in the math and just that hour change. And that just immediately, you know, quite a lot of math things on the Sunday. So you're running the day after that change. That just small change, really, an hour seemed to impact performance quite a lot, whereas going back the change in autumn didn't really seem to impact performance at all. So that slight change will impact your performance and I guess really the point here was just try to get on the time zone as early as possible if you're traveling further. You know, if you're just going to Europe and it's a one hour difference, then you might just be able to do it night off, but just sort of bake that into your sleep, especially the week of the race. And I guess maybe less direct research base but more like practical. I think our feeling always is like try just really prioritize your sleep the days before and then the night of, except you might not sleep well. - I think you probably won't sleep well, isn't it? Yeah, I definitely, I wouldn't be stressing about your sleep in the night before because it's probably going to be bad and you can cope with that. It's when you're having chronic, chronically low amounts of sleep that you are going to suffer. And I definitely think get on the right time zone and having spoken to you and work with physiologists who are supporting Olympic teams and Commonwealth teams, that is a massive part of their role is getting people from the right time zone and they're doing things. They are trying to shift their own individual time zone to about the country they're going to be racing in before they leave, before they get on the plane. They are already trying to shift their bedtime earlier or later, depending on where they're going and doing things like having those blackout blinds to really control your light exposure, trying to get off the screens because we all know that's not great for our circadian rhythms and it really does mess with that sort of stuff. I mean, I always think back to, we used to go camping in my friend's house every summer and we would go to bed quite early just because we were in the valleys, in the mountains. It's dark at half past nine, you go to bed because it's dark and then you wake up at seven o'clock because the light suns come up and just having, when you haven't got screens, lights all around, it's just, you naturally just realize, actually I'm quite tired and we go to bed. So trying to just use those tools to leverage your time, individual time zone in the right direction. - Yeah, and also just, yeah, maybe taking some steps to really make sure that you have good sleep hygiene as well. So as I found to take earplugs with you, if you have really noisy Spanish people above you, take an eyemask as well, especially, it seems like hotel rooms always have lights on, like, you know, the TV doesn't properly turn off and the lights on, and I don't know, that always impacts me quite a lot. So, yeah, just remember that stuff. And maybe, you know, if you need to get used to it, you use those earplugs for the week before. Yeah, I think the only other thing I'd add a bit anecdotally, but then also I did find a paper that sort of talked about this is if you really don't sleep the next day, there seems to be a reduction in substrate availability for exercise, so I think they basically just had a participant stay up all night and just related to that. I can't remember why I had the anecdote, but I remember hearing, I think, as Mebke Kevlesky, the American partner, I think he said, maybe before Rio 2016, you couldn't sleep, so you just, like, set up all night for just eight loads, just extended his car load. I thought there may be slightly related, but yeah, we've all experienced it right where, you know, you've had a night where night doesn't sleep at all and you're just, you're really hungry at, like, 4 a.m. Because, actually, your metabolism is. a lot higher when you're awake, rather than the sleep. So yeah, maybe if you can't see blood, just eat a little bit more of the morning of the race, that might be more beneficial as well. He actually ran a good race, didn't he, Emreah? I'm pretty sure. So yeah, Emreah. Yeah, I'm proud. He is famous in Rio because he slides across the line. He trips up, doesn't he? He trips across the line. And then does press ups. I'm pretty sure he's a, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure he's a good runner. He was a top 10 finish from Emreah. Don't quote me on that. Yeah. And I think the other thing I'm going back to, if you're a parent, you've got kids in the house, especially young kids, you don't sleep. This is when you beg your partner, can I sleep in the spare room? Can I sleep on the sofa? Whatever. And actually, I would prioritize that, but probably Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, over the Saturday night, getting, if you can go in having, like, good night sleep consistently, especially if you're used to being sleep deprived because you are a parent, but it's going to, you're going to feel like the superman or superwoman come, come to saturday and the saturday night, if you don't sleep, you don't sleep. Part of your pre-race planning should be banking lots of brownie points for your partner so that you think you know what we're doing. I've got, I've got a thank you, my Emreah, on so many occasions, basically every marathon block. Not every, not the whole block, but like, you know, but last week, she's pretty generous to me. It's the less than issue now. I'm nice finally learn to sleep, but yeah, because you have that change, she's come August, but anyway, yeah, I think it's also just not stressing out because that becomes a bit of a, a cycle, doesn't it, where you're stressed that you need enough sleep and then you can't sleep and just, I think, realizing I'm at saturday night with the adrenaline, the caffeine on race day, I think caffeine is a good tool. If you are a bit sleep deprived, and that's all the research on caffeine indicates that it doesn't give you superpowers, but it can bring you back to your norm if you are sleep deprived, if you are fatigued, all that sort of stuff. So that is when caffeine is a good tool to use. Yeah, yeah, agree. And also maybe, maybe send to think about the day before the race is actually, like, you know, for me, I don't really have caffeine after about one o'clock, but on the day before the race, probably it's like 11 a.m. Just, I know I'm quite sensitive to it. So just be really mindful of that. And that seems to work as well. Yeah, just as an approach that maybe helps, maybe it doesn't, but, or, yeah, maybe, maybe Jake doesn't want to drink his bottle of Pepsi the night before London, that I was any sort of caffeine in it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe he does sleep. He's just wired all the time. That's my impression. Anyway, um, expo and lifestyle is our next one. Our next point, cover. So when, when we planned this and you said about doing this, and I thought, Dan, you've never been to an expo in your life, I don't think. So I went to volunteer expo. I didn't have a choice to. I didn't. I could have not gone to the expo. But I won't be going to London marathon expo. Yeah. I think it's just, I think the easiest thing with this is just go as early as possible. Um, we, we did that shake out before Valencia, and I think me, you and Jen had our fleets then go into the expo. Um, and that seemed to be quite stressful, especially Valencia just happens to be a bit difficult to get to. Um, London is pretty easy to get to from central London, but it's still just a really busy packed room. And the way they're laid out is you have to walk through the whole thing. So you're sort of adding like 10,000 steps that you don't necessarily need to do if you can do it a few days before. Yeah. It's a design purpose for that, isn't it? So you have to walk past every single stand and, yeah, the, uh, the sponsors are getting their money's worth through exposure, isn't it? But yeah, I mean, uh, you definitely want to do it as early as you can. I've been very lucky. But normally I don't need to go to the expo. Uh, even to be like, didn't, um, but, uh, yeah, when I have had to go the earlier, but better Barcelona, I had to go Barcelona half on that was absolute carnage. It was like a, it was like a disco rave in the middle of the expo. You couldn't hear a thing. Absolute carnage. I want to get out of there as soon as I could. Um, but yeah, definitely if you're getting in, if you're getting in on the Friday, go on the Friday, yeah. If you're, and for the first thing Saturday, I would even prioritize that potentially over the shakeout or run there with some food, like some snacks or a local, or somewhere you know, you can get food straight after to go to the expo. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say the running to the expo. Um, and then maybe we'll just start talking about the travel stuff as well. But, um, for Valencia, I traveled down the first day and I just knew it's just going to be a really stressful day. I'm going to get to Valencia. I'm going to want to run for half an hour. So I just decided to run to the expo. And then, yeah, it's a bit of a fact getting back and you and your running stuff. But the expo was really calm. And then I woke up on Friday morning and I didn't have to do anything else before the race. Like everything was completely done, and I can find all of the stress to that one day and linked it into doing the half an hour job I wanted to do. Um, and again, you know, if you're traveling, you know, you're a family and with kids, it can be harder to do. But I think just trying to combine as much as possible to then have less to do the day off, I think is, is going to be beneficial. And if that means running 10 minutes less on Thursday or Friday, I would still prioritize that. And then having a completely chilled out Saturday, yeah. Well, the whole stress and anxiety around the race is a lot of it is to do with just the logistics of picking up your number of get into the start line of finding somewhere to eat and all of these decisions we've got to make just compound. And then yeah, and you just don't want that in the 24 hours before elites that have it so lucky. I mean, but they're in the hotel and everything is done for them. And that does make a big, big difference, I think. So how you need to count about is just being really organized and I'm not actually leaving it to the day before you leave to work out these logistics. I had a really good plan. What am I doing? When am I going? Where do I need to buy the train ticket? Whatever it is to leave stress and anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, the same with the travel as well, you know, if you can travel there earlier, the better. Just means if there's any issues, then you've got time to deal with that issue and then also deal with this sort of stress they're all going about. And then I also put as well, just figuring out beforehand how you're going to get to the start of the race. If you're in walking distance, then maybe do one of your, you know, one of your jobs the day before or two days before to the start to see sort of know where you're going. Again, you know, Valencia, that was one of my shake out runs was the route I'd take to the start. As it turned out, there's so many people walking there that you didn't really need to do it. But it just meant that I woke up on the day and I knew where I was going. And even though it's dark when you're walking there, I know where to go and where the start is going to be. And just even what it looks like, I know like, okay, that's where the backdrop is. That's where I just need to go when I get in. That's where the toilets are. And it's sort of clear in your mind, because that's probably the thing that's causing the anxiety is the uncertainty of how it's going to look and how you're going to get there. And I definitely feel like it races where, for me, especially we sort of mentioned the psychological stuff. Like if I'm not in control of how I'm getting to a race, it causes me anxiety. So even though in, you know, even though it's really beneficial, I know like, I don't think I'll mind me saying this, but when I did, when I did stride half in the build up to Valencia and I was going there with my parents and it was, well, we didn't we didn't know what roads were going to be closed and like how, where they were going to park. And we just sort of got close to the close to the start of the race. And then there was a road close and I was like, look, I'm jumping out. I'm going to walk and just sort of took control of my travel and relieved all of the anxiety. So I think if you can be clear, whereas I got in the car that morning and now in two hours before the race, didn't know what I was getting into. Whereas Valencia, I knew exactly what was going on. And it's just another way to reduce anxiety before the race. That's a whole other dynamic you've just made me think about is the people who you are there with. If you, if you've got a friend and they've offered you to drive together, see a marathon, but you know, they have a complete stress head, just politely say no, because that is just going to rub off on you. You want someone, I think some people like to do it just themselves. I was like a pretty solo trip, at least traveling out to Saville, I then stayed by myself and that was quite nice. Other people need someone there to just ground them and make sure that they are not going off the wall and making city decisions and just becoming a bit dysregulated. So I think choosing if you can, I have to be extent like, who are you going to be hanging out with in the 48 hours beforehand? Who is going to make you feel good? Find someone like Jake Smith, the ultimate hype man, who's just going to talk to you up and say, yeah, you're going to do great. You're going to be amazing. You've finished your ever being. You've done all the work, all that sort of stuff. There are the sort of people you want to be tight and be with, not not the the ears, but donkeys who are just bringing return down, bringing the mood down? Have that just robs off on you? You'll find out which one I am before London, I guess. - I'm not missing those, I guess it's a bit different. - That's fine, you're not racing, I've got no issues there. It'll be great. - Jake should start charging on Cameo for like pre-race pump-ups. - I can't wait to hang out with him in the hotel the night before it's gonna be great. I'll be thinking I can run 205 by the time he's finished his chat. - I do agree, and I think the other thing I was gonna add is like be a bit selfish. You know, if you've got a mate that likes to leave it to the last minute to travel and you're someone like me that wants to be there two hours before, just be selfish and just go do your own thing. Like don't worry about it, it's not a problem if you're gonna prioritise sort of your own mental well-being and feeling good on the start line. Like if that was me, I would just be sat there for hours just be like when are we going, when are we going, and then just wasting those mental energy? So I've definitely found like just take control and do what makes you happier is the best thing to do with all of the travel. There will be people that will be listening to this, that have absolutely no issue, you know, flying out to Valencia on Saturday morning, going to the expo, going to like a little pod hotel and like just, you know, like not necessarily no planning but they're just, they're wired that way and that's fine but that's not how someone else is and do whatever makes you feel best I think. - Yeah, and I think it's also partly your personality type but also how many times have you done this before? If you're a serial marathon runner, this sort of stuff doesn't stress you out because you've done all the, you know all the situations you could find yourself in, you've found out what you, you know, you just, there's just so many more options like you know what you can eat and what you can't eat, you don't need to be fixed and have all these really tight plans, I would say. But if you're more of a first time marathoner or you know that you're, you really type a character and you need to know all the details and how it goes smoothly, then this is definitely an area to invest in I think time. - Yeah, I agree. - I guess I just added a section of just other stuff but there was only one thing I had in here but I don't know if you have any more. But I think especially for some of these spring mountains where people are looking at the weather, especially days and days out and you see it's gonna be warm. I think there's a lot of people looking at doing things like saunas and baths and I just wanted to add to that as an extra sort of what we would maybe advise people, I guess and I think my thoughts were, actually, you should probably, if you're gonna be doing it, I'd probably be doing it more than two days out. Really as early as possible. It's gonna be more beneficial. If you're not doing it more than like two and a half, three weeks out, you're probably only gonna get the sort of plasma volume gains, rather than the increase hemoglobin mass, which is gonna be beneficial if it's hot right 'cause you're just gonna have a higher sweating capacity. But I think the really big thing is probably that you need to be looking at a saunas or baths as really like training load or stress and maybe you wanna drop the running load to correspond. I'm definitely seeing people that are tapering for races, adding it in. And to me then I'm just thinking, well, I don't think you're really then tapering. Like your stress from running or running related things has actually probably stayed the same because you've added in a 40 minute bath. That's all my thinking. So I'd say if you add this you need to drop the running to correspond is definitely something I would think 'cause you could just cook yourself in three or four days before the race. - Yeah, yeah, literally, yeah. Yeah, I definitely, if you're talking strictly for the last 48 hours then I mean, I wouldn't just go wrong. It's actually now, I'm on Thursday and in the weather's now looking really hot for London, I'm gonna do a hot bath Friday and Saturday that's gonna do nothing. But actually these adaptations do happen quite quickly. So if you started out on the Monday and you did Monday to Friday, you will get some sort of effects from that. You probably will increase your blood volume but I completely get your point and probably agree with your mind that if you haven't done that before, you're not gonna know what your response is because I seem to tolerate it quite well. I don't think it affects me that much. Whereas when Jen has tried it and Dave have tried it, they've both end up cooks and it stresses stress and it's a pretty unpleasant experience, even just psychologically, if you've not done it before, you've not sat in a 40 degree plus bath for an extended period of time. It's pretty miserable and on race week, I think you probably wanna prioritize things that make you feel good. And again, I am gonna try and do the hot baths up to London, but I will probably do the last one on the Thursday and I definitely wouldn't be doing it on Friday Saturday because I just haven't got access to a bath, but also because of it is stress and I probably don't want to be feeding rubbish at any point in those 48 hours. I probably will do for other reasons but I don't wanna know deliberately make me feel pretty enough in that time window. - Yeah, you know, we're talking about like our experiences, like my experience was that first week, I was just so hungry and did feel like fairly sort of cooked and then after that, it was okay but it definitely, yeah, I just think of it as really it's stress. So, you know, your heart rate is elevated and there's a physiological response to it. So, that's not vastly different to a run and that's how I would be thinking. You wouldn't think that I'm suddenly gonna double my running volume two days before. So, why would you, you know, baths aren't that dissimilar? At least how it's gonna sort of manifest on race day. I think it's probably just asking for trouble. - It's definitely gonna increase your carbohydrate up station rates. Heat does, even just like exercising in the heat, if you're exercising in hot temperatures, then you get more of your energy from carbohydrates versus fats. That's just, that's just what happens with physiological response. So, if you're exposing, you're increasing your core body temperature, that is gonna drive an increase in energy metabolism. So, it probably just doesn't work that well. If you are at the same time trying to carb load. - Yeah, I just say, I think it's something that's definitely being, you know, maybe we take some responsibility, but it's being definitely hit the mainstream. And, but I think it's, it's, like we've definitely said, it's definitely something easy to add to your training, but I wouldn't be thinking about that too, you know, two weeks before let alone two days before a race. I think that was just too late probably. - Yeah, yeah, that was, that was sort of my, my main, like, other thing. I don't know if you had any other sort of closing thoughts I guess. - I think probably using, I would use that window as like a final check of the weather before, I mean, I know that comes back to our previous episode of House, where it's you, the marathon, but in about 48 hours, I would choose a specific window where I'm gonna check the weather and not just go on wet to your pace, go on the met office, whatever you're using, every 10 minutes to see what the latest forecast is. You're gonna have a good, if you check it on the Thursday evening, oh, no, the Thursday evening, Friday evening, you can have a really good flavor of what to expect. So it's not gonna change drastically from there. And once you know, like that is the situation you're dealt, it's not great, you've got 48 hours been to process, right? I probably need to adjust my goals slightly to account for that. - Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. And, you know, that's where I like, I like blocked the meteor pace Instagram page the week before Valencia, 'cause I just didn't want to see, I didn't want to see the weather unless I decided to see the weather. So I think that's, I don't know, maybe that's another like last little thing, just yeah, like, maybe not necessarily come off social media, but yeah, maybe, maybe don't block certain accounts. If you, you know, if they add to your anxiety, you might block the meteor pace account for the week, but then, you know, every other influence that you follow is talking about the weather. - Well, I think I was actually speaking to an athlete today who's prepping for a spring marathon and they were saying that actually it's relentless at this time of year, if you are someone who has naturally has a bit higher anxiety around racing, you're just getting bombarded about running, marathon running, London marathon, whatever it is, constantly. And so you end up, if you are someone who, maybe has not got a flat out week for week before the marathon, and you are spending a bit more time on social media, you're just getting bombarded every second. And that's probably not great for your cortisol levels, stress levels and just your psyche. in leading into Race Week. Yeah, so yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe curate your profile on Instagram the week of or just, just remove the app for the week. Yeah, or just listen to a podcast that talks about how to prep for the marathon on repeat. Go through every episode on marathon prep in the race week. That's pretty good idea, either. No. Hopefully we're using the problem, though. Hopefully we're providing good advice which will make race day like the best it can be. Yeah, well, I guess, I guess maybe the, the sort of high level message we're trying to convey with this is just, just plan, plan this a week or two weeks out and then you don't have to actually think about it too much or you're just refining the plan. Yeah, those, those sort of week or two weeks out rather than, rather than getting to Friday and thinking, oh no, what do I do for this? Like it's, it's planned and you can then make changes but they're not huge changes. They're, they're sort of minor adjustments. Absolutely, absolutely. I think the whole like last week, the last few days are just about making your life as easy as possible so that you don't have added stress because race going to be some anxiety and some stress around race day and we definitely should, I know we're a physiology podcast, but we definitely should get a site on at some point to do about pre-race nerves, pre-race anxiety strategies to approach that. I mean, personally, I, I like to try and frame it as in what, firstly, what's the worst that could happen? You have a bad marathon. You can do another one. I know you can, it's going to be six months, but there's plenty of opportunity there to go again. It's not like this or, or, or, or never basically, it's not your own opportunity. And one of the advantages, but we have, I assume most people listening at Amateurs, not professionals doing this for their living, if it goes wrong, you've got work for next day, you've got probably a family, you've got friends for next day, but are, you know, they're going to be pleased for you if you run a good time, but at the same time, they're not going to care if you're a bad run. They'll more be worried, they'll be making sure that you're all right, but life goes on. It's what I'm trying to say. So just framing it as in, yeah, like we obviously train a lot for this. It's really important to us as a big part of our lives, but it's just, it's just a race. It's just a race. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah, just, yeah, keeping, keeping that perspective, I think, is the, is, yeah, I guess the underlying thing, and then how you, how you think about an approach to races is individualized and let you say, well, definitely get a psychologist on to talk about this because it impacts your physiology as well. We mentioned, we mentioned like your heart rate in the rate, the runs before. That's probably as much as sort of psychophysiological impact. So it definitely impacts. Yeah, I think I think that's probably everything. Yeah, I think so. I don't need to, I don't think I need to put training more psychology. Let's, we'll leave that for an expert at some point, probably going into your to marathon blocks at this point, but hopefully it's been useful. And everyone who is racing a marathon in me coming weekends, like good luck. Enjoy it. Have that perspective, but I just hopefully with that, how to pace your marathon podcast we did, you've got a really good idea of what to do on race day. You're now going to have a really good plan of what to do in most 48 hours beforehand. Just get that nails. You're all wrong, great. And enjoy it most importantly because it's supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun. Yeah, best of luck, everyone running. Thank you for listening to the physiology of endurance running podcast. The podcast is proudly sponsored by SOAR. SOAR are the producers of the world's best running apparel designed to fit the needs of the runner that put in time and effort into the sport. Check out their link in the show notes below. If you're interested, we have additional content available on our Patreon link is also in the show notes.