For any of you out there looking to improve on this mark, I'm not sure if my approach was the best but here is what I (Sean) did:
4/2 (day before):
7:30AM - Bowl of cereal (Great Grains Granola with Dates and Raisins)
8:30AM - 9.25 miles
~10:15 - Large brunch at International House (pancakes, eggs, bacon, country potatoes, tortellini, spanish rice with a slice of fried white fish, orange, bowl of strawberry yogurt with granola, chocolate milk, orange juice, cranberry juice, water)
1:30PM - Short 2 mile run to go to an apartment open house.
5PM - Small bowl of cereal (great grains, as above)
10:30PM - Run home from lab (2 miles), for total of 13.25 on the day.
- Slept ~8.5 hours
4/3 (day of):
8AM - Small bowl of cereal (great grains, as above ... yeah, I really like that stuff and it was on sale at Safeway)
11AM - Warm up to track, go pick up burgers. Total warmup ~3 miles in 20 minutes.
11:45AM - The race.
My thinking was trying to expand my stomach early the day before, and then to just have a small trickle of food going through to keep my appetite high in the lead-up. In the interest of full disclosure, I eat a lot of food on a normal basis (though usually not all in the form of one greasy sandwich!). Also, this is not the first eating challenge I've tried, though it is the first I've successfully conquered.
Not sure if there is anything I would do different. There are the obvious things you could do to improve on the running part (i.e. spikes, taper, try hard, add competition), but I'm not sure ... any ideas on improving for the eating part?
Thanks for all the feedback by the way, you guys make the pain (and artherosclerosis imminent in my future) that much more worth it :)
- Sean