ReggaeMarathon Blog

Any marathoner in the final week of training has only one thing to do…rest.  It sounds easy.  After 15 or so weeks of torture, blood sweat and tears all that you need to do is eat well, rest more and walk around with a water bottle in hand.  In recent times with the advent of H1N1 many of my fellow marathoners have added hand sanitizer to the list of final week necessities, no point doing all this work to run 26.2 miles with the flu.  But if you are traveling for your marathon, be warned this is not as easy as it seems.

 

First you have to pack, which should be easy enough, but this kind of packing requires the kind of forethought only seen before when NASA gets ready to send off a shuttle.  You need to pack your running shoes, the right running shoes and maybe a back up pair with inner soles, but then you need to unpack them in case your baggage gets lost so you have to carry them in your hand luggage with your other valuables.  Then you need to pack for the heat, the cold, and the cold that turns into heat! Then you pack your garmin, your charger, your band aids (I’m not sure why, I think you would be over any blisters by now, but I packed mine anyway), your registration info, your lucky something, and if you remember your under pants, well you are ahead!

 

Then you have to do everything you could possibly need to do before you go away, check dog food, kids homework, water the plants, check the accounts, work long hours to get ahead because chances are if you are doing a marathon you are one of those type A’s that isn’t going to simply let it wait till you get back. 

 

Then when you have had your hectic day and you collapse into bed an hour early ( as prescribed) you spend the next three hours worrying.  Why am I doing this? What time and I going to do? What is this place Jamaica going to be like?  Will I be able to eat the food? Will it make me sick?  Is the water good? How hot is it? Is everyone going to run like Usain Bolt and leave me trailing behind?  Are they all going to stop at 800 meters and I’ll be the only one still running? After all you are not sure you’ve ever seen a Jamaican run more than 800.  Sleep deprivation sets in, you are thinking you need rest but oh no you forgot to take the dog to get his shots!

 

So the next morning when you wake up you repack adding food, unpacking the cold weather gear adding more hot weather gear and plan to take the dog to the vet on your way to work, the bank, pharmacy, supermarket and to say good bye to some loved ones.  Enjoy your rest!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some tips:

 

The hotels in Negril will have excellent food and the drinking water is fine (that is Mexico you were thinking about).

 

Negril is a rural part of Jamaica you will not find a shop with a wide selection of running gear, shoes or even sports foods like power bars, ghu etc.

 

The race is extremely well organized and you will find a competitive field that will challenge you and make you look good!  Some take it very seriously and others seriously want to have fun for 26.2 miles!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.