I will write this blog post in English and hope you can understand my English.

Today it is 10 days left to Stockholm Marathon but I think that every weekend there is a lot of marathon races around the world. The upcoming weekend there is a marathon in Ottawa in Canada, close to Montreal where I have been several times, I have went to school there and I have been working with fireworks there. And now I have a Canadian classmate that will run her first marathon in Ottawa this weekend and she has asked me a really good and common question from beginners that I will give my answer to.

The story and question goes like this. I have trained to my marathon but suddenly when it is really close to the race I feel underprepared. Have I done enough? Could I have done more? I have not even run 42,2 km or 26,2 miles so how do I know that I will manage it? I have only run 35 km as the longest in my training, but is that enough? How shall I think and prepare myself and stay positive towards the race.

Well, first of all, you don´t have to run 42,2 km on your training. I think I can say that most of the marathon runners that will run 42,2 km on training is ultra runners or runners that will do their first marathon. When it comes to how I think about the log runs before a marathon I think that most of the log runs can be like 25-28 km, some of them between 28-32 km and a few between 32-37 km. I think that is enough. But as always, way are different and we also need different kind of preparations like the distance in the long runs. But when we have less than 2-3 weeks left to the race, the training is done, we can´n improve ourselves that much the last weeks but if we train to hard to close the race day, we can destroy the training that we have done. I think that it is better to train less than more the last 2 weeks. And about the thoughts towards the race and on race day? First of all, have fun. But of course you have a goal and you have to keep up a pace that is in line with your goal. And when it comes to the mentally part I use to think like this. I could say that I never feel that ”today should be a marathon race day, I feel amazing and I should have run my personal best!” I never feel like that on a training. But when I woke up on a race day, me and my body knows what is coming up, it is a marathon race and this is it. Before a race day you think about the race several days before race day, you eat more, you drink more, you sleep more and you train much less. All these details is specially for you just before race day. When you should do a long run on a truing you hardly prepare at all, you just wake up, have some breakfast and you run away. But when it is race day, you are prepared in several different ways. I use to say that the only days during the year that I am ready to run a marathon, is the days that really is marathon race days, that´s the only days I am really prepared.

I hope you can understand my answer Elizabeth and I wish you the best of luck. And hopefully you reach your goal so we will meet in Boston next year. I will be there!

Running Boston Marathon, is very big in the US. This is me in my Boston Jacket from this years race!