What else really matters? It's the training. For me? I like to run in the morning - start the day right. Miles in the bank. Get a few steps ahead of most everyone else you see that day. OK - 6 days a week, one long run, one speed and/or hill workout and then just one foot in front of the other the other four. There are training plans everywhere "on the net" but my own rule of thumb is to be on the road at least 40-50 miles a week in the 4 or 5 months before the big race.
An example? The Marine Corps Marathon. To make a short story long, I ran it a few times. Each year a group of maybe 5 or 6 of us drove from NJ checked in to the hotel in Crystal City, settled in and then got together in the lobby to rendez vous for the walk to the resaturant in Georgetown for the superstition food pre-race dinner. It all started the first time we ran there and found an Italian place. No, it wasn't that we were looking for pasta. It seemed like an OK place from the outside and they had a table for six available for a group without a reservation. Done. I had gnocci with oil and garlic, which I'd never had before. The food was good.
The next morning our group met for breakfast, ate whatever we thought looked good in the buffet - mostly pancakes or eggs or cereal and we had lots of coffee. I've never had a superstition breakfast. At that point I think that the adrenalin and calories are more meaningful. After all, at about 100 calories per mile, it's a day's worth of energy in somewhere between 3 and 4 hours (hopefully closer to the 3 side of things). It was more than a mile to the start, but we always walked because we figured it was a good "slow warm up."
So there it is. Mingle with with the start mob - make a stop at the "portable public sanitation" (or the bushes) drink some water, talk to your friends, look for other people you know, look at your watch, decide when to go down to the start and just where to line up. You're as ready as you can be and the gun can't sound soon enough. When it does, you're on your own. It's just one foot in front of the other for a bit more than 26 miles, but at the moment, the only thing that matters is putting one foot in front of the other. There's an (originally Asian?) saying - "the journey is more interesting than the destination."
Maybe it's only me, but I suspect that lots of runners have found that in long distance running there is a "distortion" in the perception of how much time is passing. All of us have a pace at which we stay aerobic - it's determined by how we've trained and how our "physiology" has adapted to spending hours on the road in the previous weeks and months and years. I'd say that people are "born to run." There's a book with that name - read it. It's good and it explains why I've said that. Sure, everyone has a target time for finishing the marathon, for our group it was always the time we needed to qualify for Boston. That doesn't fade away completely during the race, but what seems to happen is that perception shifts from the "left brain" to the "right brain" and we live in the moment not in the future (until we see the time clock at the next mile marker ;-) The sense of time gives way to a sense of perceived effort - and you are on your own in that department. Training and fitness determine when "pushing" gives way to fatigue.
Well, so much for analysis and blah blah blah. The night before the big day starts with a superstition dinner, which is what you ate before your last great run and sets you up for showing up in the morning with not a single doubt in your mind about what the outcome is going to be. Have a great run!
And now for a Gnocci recipe? Forget about it. I did make them once for the first and last time. They were good, but just about everything in the kitchen needed cleaning including the walls and floor - and it took a long time. Go out and buy 'em. Make your favorite sauce. Garlic and oil, marinara, alfredo, gorgonzola, bechamel - they are all good.
By he way, it seems gnocci were first cooked in ancient Rome and were a pasta dish made from wheat, maybe something like the cavitelli or spaetzle of today. Potato gnocci couldn't have happened until centuries later when potatoes got to Europe.
Anyway, since you are going to buy your next potato gnocci dinner either before a marathon or some other evening when you think a bit of superstition will help, I'll give you a recipe for a related dish that you can make and eat with a glass of champaigne to celebrate finishing your next marathon. It's for apricot dumplings AKA marillenknödel (in Austria) or ovocne knedliky (in Czech) - in a day or two. (Lost my sense of time, again - as always - Zen replaces urgency)
