More Marathon Fuel

Hazel

Tuesday was a quick 3 miles. Gillian looked veritably disappointed at such a short distance, but I put my foot down: this is the taper. Relax, turn the legs over, that’s all we need to do. We can’t get any more fit from running this week, the only thing we can do is overdo it and ruin our chances. So light runs, and food are our focus. With that in mind, I planned a three miler to end at the Eton Fudge Shop! We arrived looking quite daft, tied together and blinking from the bright sun. But the wonderful man in the Eton Fudge Shop made a donation to our fundraising efforts (Thank you!) and gave us some hints and tips from his own marathon running experience. On top of that he sold us some of Gillian’s secret weapon. The silver bullet of long distance runners: fudge.

In the name of good science, Gillian has been systematically trialling every brand and flavour of fudge she can throughout our year of training. And we have settled on the clotted cream flavour and salted caramel flavour fudges. By brilliant coincidence our local fudge shop in Eton has the finest we have ever tasted, so if we keep running after the marathon I can foresee quite a few ‘runs’ which end at their front door….

So on the big day we will be fuelled by homemade brownies, fudge and Clif shot blocks. Not the most traditional of marathon fuels, but in my opinion a much healthier set of options than most people’s yakky energy gel pouches and wee-flavoured isotonic drinks! We’ll take water from the water stations, and hopefully get parachuted a flask of tea in the final miles from our able bodied assistants.

Fuel preparation sorted.