In South Africa we have two big marathons coming up, the first being the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon on the 20th of October.

For those running Cape Town you will all be well into your taper now, no doubt feeling a bit nervous and
trying to stay fit and healthy.

The taper period is where your body recovers and gets refreshed from the weeks of high mileage training, it’s normal to feel a bit sluggish and to think every little pain is an injury and every cough the flu!

Some things you can do in the last week to give yourself the best chance of success on race day.

1. Try and avoid crowded spaces and stay away from people who are sick, it’s not an easy thing to do but I am convinced airports are the place where most people pick up illnesses leading up to a race. I wear an N95 face mask when I travel a few days before and use hand sanitizer.
2. Don’t try and catch up on any training lost, you can’t improve your fitness now.
3. Keep an eye on what you eat, it’s very easy to pick up a little bit of weight when your training load decreases so stick to your healthy foods.
4. Go through your pre race checklist and plan exactly how you will get to the start line.
5. Plan your race, now is the time to review your training and work out a realistic time based on what you have done in training/races. It’s so important to do this as do many marathons are ruined by people being too optimistic with their goals. Study the course in detail, finding previous runs on Strava are a great way to check. You should plan your watch pace based on a distance around 42.5km to allow for the GPS error (some courses will be up to 43km on the watch but studying Strava will give you a good idea).
6. Don’t try and lie in as much as you can on race moming, it’s much better to get up early, an extra hour in bed won’t make any difference.
   
   Cape Town marathon is a great event, the course does have a few undulations and is obviously subject to the winds, but it’s certainly one of the fastest marathons in South Africa.
   
   In other news it’s amazing to see that Two Oceans was over subscribed in both the half and Ultra, I know many are disappointed at not getting a place but remember there will be another opportunity when substitutions open. It certainly feels like the running boom is continuing to gather pace!
   Until next time.
   
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