Marathon Coach · Train Smarter
My Race Morning Checklist (Written After a Chaotic Start Line)
A marathoner’s race-day morning checklist: battery, breakfast, warm-up, and the pacing calm that matters more than gadgets.
Night before is when the race starts
Charge devices. Lay out kit. Pin the plan. Two alarms. No new foods, no new shoes. I’ve broken each of those rules once. I remember the races for the wrong reasons.
Decide how you’ll start the workout recording before you’re standing in a corral pretending to be calm.
Morning of: practiced, not perfect
Eat the breakfast you’ve already tested on a long-run day. Sip fluids early. Arrive with margin for lines and porta-potties. A short warm-up if the event allows — nothing that steals race legs.
Start recording when you start running, not after you’ve already burned a nervous kilometer.
Pacing calm beats gadget anxiety
Crowds make the first stretch artificially fast. Settle to goal effort when space opens. Trust training more than one optimistic split. The watch is a tool; your patience is the strategy.