one week to go

by

Regular readers of my blog will know that in just over a week me and my legs will be attempting to run (or crawl) around the london marathon with several thousands others in an attempt to raise money for charity.

Now don’t worry this is not yet another pitch for more cash (although if you do have any spare please pop along to my fundraising site) this is a post giving you the benefit of my experience as I have been stupid enough to run this race before.

Jane’s Marathon running tips

1. Its never too late to pay a friend to push you over and sprain your ankle. I would advise anyone who has not ran further than a half marathon to adopt this tactic and stop reading now.

2. Carbs are your friend; for the next week eat the following, potato with beans for breakfast, pasta with tuna for lunch, rice and beans for tea. Feel free to snack on raw potatoes at any point.

3. Take some old clothes to ditch at the start line; you can keep warm until you are ready to start and then just leave them at the side of the road and the Red Cross collects them for charity.

4. Emblazon your name all over your running shirt; nothing helps more when you are dying slightly inside at mile 22 than some unknown face bellowing out your name from the crowd.

5.Take some salted pretzels; trust me here; at mile twenty all salt will abandon your body at an alarming speed and weird salt deprivation pains will attack your thighs; spending a mile or so sucking on a little salted pretzel will do you no end of good.

6. Should the thought of squirting a gel pack of wet sticky into your mouth make you feel like vomiting take a glucose filled biscuit Booth and cut it into five pieces and reward yourself with a piece every five miles.

7. The night before and the morning of the marathon apply vaseline to your body and don’t stop until you resemble a sex toy. Boys; coat those nipples, nothing turns a lady off more than two matching red patches dripping down your chest.

8. If you are prone to blisters buy and apply Compeed; you may need to buy shares in Compeed at this point should you blister half as much as I do.

9. Do a rain dance daily between now and the seventeenth; if this sun continues the race is going to be hell!

10. Post marathon do not, I repeat do not attempt to walk up or down stairs in public for a week – you will shame yourself.

11. Smile! Completing a marathon gives you an incomparable feeling of ecstasy. You will almost instantly forget the suffering of the last 10k

That’s all folks, see you at the start….

Good luck

24 thoughts on “one week to go”

  6. Good luck. I will bear those tips in mind if I ever decide to run a marathon. This is highly unlikely despite being something I’d actually quite like to do. Meanwhile I think you are bloomin amazing to do this!

Comments are closed.