Carbs, carbs, carbs

Three days til race day.  The name of the game is carb loading.  The goal is to get the glycogen stores tapped up so that there is plenty to burn on race day.  Carb loading is one of the benefits of running.

Unless you have no appetite.  And I don't.  I don't mean that it's low.  I mean that it is nonexistent.  This is a consequence of my antibiotics and the whole infection thing going on.  So I'm not able to truly enjoy the carb loading, though I'm doing my best to do it.  Never in my life have I had to force myself to eat (I usually have to force myself to stop), but that's what I'm doing now.  And it's not very enjoyable.

But when I ran 4 miles today, it became clear to me that food is what I need.  My legs felt very good, but I felt weak.  Obviously, some of that may be from the medicine or the infection (I have felt generally weak this whole training cycle, and now we know why), but I have to believe a lot of it is just lack of glycogen.  So I've been drinking Gatorade, and Tim is making me carb-rich meals.

This run was better than the last couple, but I still just feel like I have no energy.  I will keep eating lots of carbs, hydrating, and simply hoping for the best.

The abdominal pain was there, and it was much worse in my back today than usual.  That's just part of this training cycle for me, and it will be part of the race to some degree.  I've accepted that and am honestly no longer stressed out about it.

Meanwhile, the weather looks PERFECT for a marathon.  Low of 46, high of 68.  The hourly forecast shows that it will just be in the low 50s by the end of the race (it takes a while to warm up there).  Partly cloudy and a slight wind of 5 mph.  I'll take it!

We fly out at 6 a.m. tomorrow.  Eugene, here we come!