Getting Ready for the Big Sur Marathon 2010

Hello all! I have almost finished tapering for the Big Sur Marathon! Although... in reality you should be tapering up to the starting line. I went to sleep at 9:30pm last night and set my alarm for 4am to get my sleep schedule onto marathon time. I didn't really wake up and start my day at 4, I just got up and walked around the apartment a bit and then went back to sleep until about 7:30. At 8am I stepped out for my last 2 mile jaunt up Page street in San Francisco. I have another 2 miler on Saturday but it's more of a shake-out/loosen-up kinda thing.

Aside from the Hurricane Point Hill (Check out the Virtual Tour of Hurricane Point below... It's the 2nd video.) the Big Sur Marathon offers runner's an additional and more "under the radar" type of challenge. You need to wake up at 3 am!!!  If you are staying in Monterey or Carmel (which, i think 90% of the runner's are), you need to wake up at that time to catch a bus which takes you an hour down the coast to the starting line. Mind you, the start of the race is at 6:45am! Usually, I go to sleep at about midnight each night and wake up around 8 so this waking up at 3:30am business has me "sleep training"!


In addition to the slumber conditioning, I have been eating quite a few bananas (about 2/day), clementines, raisins, avocados, whole grain stuff like Ak-Mak Crackers and Kashi Go Lean Cereal, lotsa different veggies, fish, nuts and chocolate! Even though this sounds like quite a bit of food I have been monitoring the quantity of my intake to avoid gaining weight.

The Big Sur Marathon will be my 4th full marathon and it's the first marathon that I have trained for using a running coaches training schedule. I used Hal Higdon's Advanced I schedule and trained completely in San Francisco. Here's the 20 Miler route that I used for this training program:

I also ran along the hillier part of that course for the 8-14 milers. Overall, I would say that Hal's Advanced I schedule was great. I feel stronger and I am running faster than I ever have before. Thanks Hal!

As of now, I am feeling confident, keeping my mind quiet, and trying to catch as many z's as possible before my alarm goes off at 3:45am on Sunday morning. I am hoping to get out there and take some post race pics for the blog as well... I might bring my little camera with me on the run to capture some of the actual race but I'm still debating. If some of you felt strongly about seeing that I might be persuaded to carry it :)