14 Sep The Week Before The Bridge Run

Here are some suggestions of things that you can do to prepare without hurting yourself:

1. Get more sleep and adding an extra hour of sleep each day will help you rest up and get primed for the event. This is especially important, since youll most likely be sleepless (or very restless) the night before the race.

2. Drink plenty of fluids and Start hydrating on Monday or Tuesday, rather than the day before a race. Your body is like a sponge and needs time to absorb the fluids that youre drinking. You dont need to overdo it, however. Keep water with you in a bottle and drink throughout the day, avoiding long periods when you stop drinking (such as while youre at work). Your urine should be light yellow in color. Youre likely drinking too much if your pee is colorless.

3. Eat plenty of carbohydrate rich foods, as with drinking, you can only sock away so many calories each day. Start increasing the amount of carbohydrates in your meals at the beginning of the week.

4. Dont over eat and while you want to be increasing the amount of carbohydrates in your diet the week before a race, remember that youll be exercising less, so you dont necessarily need to eat more than normal to carbo-load. Just eat normally throughout the week, favoring starchy foods, and avoiding fatty and sugaring ones.

5. Avoid alcohol and in the days before the race, you should avoid drinking alcohol. (Sorry) It just dehydrates you.

6. Take your rest days if your workout schedule calls for rest days, take them. You need to be resting. Dont fill up your days doing other things instead of your runs. Rest means rest! And for Heavens sake, dont help your friends move; take up rock climbing; or decide to build a deck. Every season someone finds a new way to wear themselves out prior to a race. Dont do that.

7. Get a massage, a good massage on the Wednesday or Thursday prior to the race can relax you and loosen you up. Plus it just feels good.

8. Try to relax, Put pre-race anxiety aside by focusing on all of the preparations that youve made to get ready for your race.

9. Focus on pace work and short speed,rather than going out logging big Kms the week before the race, I suggest short runs that focus on internalizing your race pace. I also like to see runners do short/fast speed work to keep their legs fresh, without tiring themselves out. A good example of a workout like this would be: 4x400M or 4-6 laps of 200M hard and 200M easy. Keep the workouts short and sweet.

10. Take a nap the day prior to the race youll most likely have a difficult time sleeping the night before the race, so take a nap in the afternoon. Go to bed early the night before the race, but not more than an hour or two before your normal bedtime, so that you dont wake up at mid-night and lay awake all night.

11. Have all of your gear prepared the day or two before the race get this out of the way, so you know that you have everything and that you dont have to worry about it at the last minute.

12. Dont rush yourself on race morning get up with a reasonable amount of time to allow yourself to wake-up, eat, and get your pre-race bathroom trips (N0.2) out of the way

13. Relax and the bottom-line is to relax both mentally and physically in the week before the race.

The last week before a race is actually quite an important one. Try to stay focused on getting rested, hydrated, carbed up, and have all of your things prepared. And good luck!