The Race Prep Zone

With the Liberty House 10k now less than 48 hours away, I've entered the final nutritional phase of my pre-race training. The final two days I basically eat fruit and pasta. No meat, no dairy, no fats of any kind (i.e. nuts, seeds, oils). Fats make me feel heavy and sluggish -- I don't need any of that on Saturday morning. Here's a rough sketch of my diet yesterday through Saturday morning:

Wednesday:

• 20 oz banana/blackberry/romaine lettuce smoothie for breakfast
• Nine bananas throughout the day at work
• Around 4:30pm a big plate (8-10 oz) of whole wheat pasta with a fresh tomato (from my garden!) and pure tomato sauce (no corn syrup, sugar, additives, etc)
• Around 8:30pm a half dozen burritos with refried beans, garden lettuce, tomato, green onion, salsa on whole wheat tortillas

Thursday:

• 8-10 bananas eaten throughout the day
• Medium-sized bowl of oatmeal around 2pm
• Big plate of rice pasta (more carbs/gram than whole wheat) with tomato sauce eaten around 4:30pm
• Banana/blackberry/lettuce smootie around 8:30pm

Friday:

• The same as Thursday with the exception of wheat pasta instead of rice pasta (haven't experimented with rice pasta the night before a race--I'll try it next week before next Saturday's run)

Saturday (run goes off at 8:30am):

• 32 oz banana/strawberry smoothie around 6:30am or so
• Water throughout the morning, but none after about 7:45am

If it doesn't go without saying, from Thursday on I always have a bottle of water with me. I don't know how many of ounces I go through, I just drink it constantly.

In addition to the diet, I'll probably run a mile or two friday morning just to stretch my legs. Nothing too hard, but something to connect my run on Wednesday to the race on Saturday. I don't have run today, but I played basketball for about 45 minutes this morning to get my heart rate up.

I'll check back in on Saturday after the race. A few goals below:

Race of my life goal: 48 min (7:44/mile)
Realistic goal: 50 min (8:03/mile)
Worst case scenario goal: 52 min (8:23/mile)