Twas the Night Before the Half Marathon

What does one do the day before a half marathon? Well, I can't give you a list of what you should do, but I'll walk you through what I did today. The last half marathon featured on the blog was the Disney World Half Marathon, but I wouldn't say that going to Magic Kingdom the day before running 13.1 miles is considered to be the norm.

In terms of training, what I did before my first half marathon was run throughout the week - I ran Monday (5.6 miles), Tuesday (4 miles), and Wednesday (5.4 miles) this week - do some sort of cross-training at least one of the days - I swam on Thursday, as it was a beautiful day outside, take Friday off from any type of exercise, and run 2ish miles on Saturday morning. As planned, I didn't exercise at all yesterday, and made sure to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. This morning, I woke up around 7:00 to run two miles around my neighborhood. I was a bit surprised when I checked my phone to see that it was 35 degrees outside. I'm praying that it won't be that cold tomorrow morning. We all know how I feel about the cold weather!

It was a beautiful morning, though, so I can't complain too much about that. After my two-mile run, I came back inside, showered, and made some scrambled egg whites  that I ate alongside a couple of my egg white vegetable bars, a couple banana-oatmeal-almond butter bars, and a few no-bake energy bites. Evidently I was hungry this morning! 

I sort of snacked my way through breakfast and into the later part of the morning, so after I got a haircut and by the time lunch rolled around, I wasn't too hungry. I ate a large honeycrisp apple with peanut butter around 2pm, with a couple more egg white vegetable bars and no-bake energy bites. That kept me satisfied and fueled for some school work until about fifteen minutes ago when I whipped up a dairy-free pizza to eat for dinner. I made it the way I always do, but I added a bit of leftover pulled pork that a sweet YoungLife committee mom made for us before club on Monday, to the top of it. I don't know if that's weird, but it sure tasted good!

So, my day has been pretty chill - lots of relaxing, some homework, and lots of water. I am going to try to get to bed fairly early, because my 5am wake-up call is going to come early. I am really looking forward to the race, though, because the weather should be good (albeit, cold), and I really like this course, though it is pretty darn hilly. I would love to finish in under two hours tomorrow, but realistically speaking, that probably won't happen. Hey, just finishing is an accomplishment in my book!

I'll be sure to post a race recap sometime tomorrow or Monday for y'all. Wish me luck!