Well that’s it. Training done, time for rest, hydration and hoping the weather plays ball.

For various reasons I only had time to do one weekday run before heading into rest day territory. A friend suggested I just leave my Garmin at home and go for a free run, and this turned out to be great advice. Somewhere around 4 miles to my fave Disney running music leading to this very happy face when I got back…

This afternoon I went for my last trip to the physio to check all is in working order and got as close to a full bill of health as my physio ever seems to give. I had minor maranoia about my right knee (which always hurts a bit when the weather changes because I have in fact been 45 since I was 14) and he basically told me not to be so stupid and what I thought was really bad crepitus was actually a lower than average degree of crunchy knee noise. Excellent.

Legs zapped, last minute bits for packing bought, suitcase filled with Jaffa cakes. At least in a literal sense, I’m ready for race day.

So far I haven’t been too stressed about the race. My training has gone better than I expected. I’ve practised running at race time, with several hours of sitting about before and the breakfast I will have on the day. I know the profile. I’ve got more than one pace band option. I’ve even bought a manual alarm clock after a tip off that the clocks go back over the pond this weekend. The only things left to worry about (the weather, the race line, the crowds) are things I can’t control, so there is absolutely no point worrying about them.

It’s time for my go to advice to myself before all big races; just start running and see what happens.

That’s that then. See you on the flip side.

Big thanks to Coach Mark, to my fantastic physio, to Allie, Jenny, Jessamy, Christina, Nicola, Smack, Judith, Colin and everyone else who has run with me this time around, and to Mr. Duff for always dealing with the travel admin and for bringing me into the wonderful world of planning holidays based around running a stupidly long way when you get there…!