Countdown to Boston: One Week to Go

It seems hard to believe, but after months of training, the 119th Boston Marathon is exactly one week away. By this time next week, I'll be sitting in the Athletes Village waiting for them to call us to the corrals.

For me, one week to go means a lot of things. For one, it means cutting out caffeine. Last week I began weaning myself off of it slowly, first by replacing my second cup of coffee with half-decaf, then making that second cup all decaf. Starting today, it's all decaf until the race. I like to ween myself off of caffeine so that on race morning when I take caffeinated gels, I really feel the boost. It's also probably not a bad idea to break my coffee-dependence every once in a while anyway.

Another thing the one week mark signals is that it's time to start obsessing about the weather. Yes, a lot can change over the next seven days, but that won't stop me from clicking refresh on weather.com and NOAA.gov several times an hour and worrying about every minor temperature increase or shift in wind direction.

With one week to go there's also no more time for any junk food or mindless snacking. From no until the race I aim to be very mindful about what I ingest. I only have about 20 miles scheduled between now and the marathon so I try to watch what I eat even more so than usual. I'll spend the whole week praying no one brings cupcakes into the office.

It's also time to start thinking about my packing list--I'll be posting something about that later in the week. Do I have everything I need? Are there any last minutes errands I need to run to restock on any pre-race essentials?

Finally, it's time to relax. This may not seem to go with everything else I've said above, but I'm going to try and take it easy this week. That may mean extra Netflix or some light reading. One thing it should definitely mean is catching up on sleep. The last thing I want is to head into next weekend sleep deprived since I know the closer I get to the race, the harder it is to get any shut-eye.

So with all that in mind, I'm going to try and enjoy this final week of taper. Only 169 hours to go!