The Week of the Barcelona Marathon

It’s marathon week! By the time most of you are reading this (most of my readers are in the U.S.) I will hopefully be done running my 44th marathon. (A full list of the marathons I have completed is HERE.)

This will be my 5th marathon since moving to London in July 2022; I ran Porto, Portugal; Vienna, Austria; Marathon du Medoc in Bordeaux, France, and the Dublin Marathon in Ireland.

Here’s how the final week before the Barcelona Marathon went:

Monday: Rest from running, Heartcore pilates class after work- really great class with tons of core and not as much legs, which I appreciated during the taper.

Tuesday: A “wee” little workout, 4×5 minutes moderate with 2 min jog in between. 6.6 miles total

Wednesday: Run commute with Tina, 4.5 miles, then office run, 3.1 miles. All nice and easy.

It was a foggy morning on the way to meet Tina but I did spy this foxy friend! He was stalking a Magpie in the road.

Thursday: Run commute with Tilly; her office is in King’s Cross, so we parted ways in Marylebone and i kept going to St. James’ Market and she headed to the canal.

I noticed that if I tag my run on Strava as a commute, it tells me how much carbon emissions I saved! Kinda neat.

Friday: 4.4 easy miles through the Heath, mostly trail, with a stop at our old flat to pick up some mail and then the post office to pick up a package.

That evening, we flew from Heathrow to Barcelona, arriving pretty late in the evening and heading straight to our hotel to get some sleep, the Almanac Barcelona.

Saturday: Since Dustin is not running Barcelona, but is running London April 21 instead, he had a long run to do. But he joined me for 3 shake-out miles first. We ran past the Sagrada Familia and Casa Batlló before I went back to the hotel and he went on his way to run along the coast for a longer run.

I showered, ate the tasty breakfast that was included with our stay, and relaxed with a cup of coffee for a bit until Dustin was back and then we navigated public transport to get to the expo (which is really easy with the help of the app CityMapper, my favorite app for public transport in a new city! Seriously, it’s the best.)

There was a 1.5 hour line in the rain to get into the expo! It was a little nuts. And it didn’t really make sense, as once you got to the doors, there wasn’t a security check or anything. I think they must have just been trying to space out the expo so it didn’t get too busy…waiting in the rain wasn’t all that fun! Fortunately our hotel had given us umbrellas. Barcelona doesn’t really get that much rain (they’ve actually been in a bit of a drought!) so it was a good thing it rained all day, but it did make exploring a bit messier!

After the expo, we met my niece (who is studying abroad here) to take the tour of the inside of the Sagrada Familia. It was stunning; unfortunately due to the high winds and rain, the towers were closed, so we didn’t get to go to the top for the view.

Dustin and I had a pre-marathon meal at Parking Pizza, which was a cool pizza spot in an old parking garage. The pizza was delicious!

Sunday: Marathon day! Even though I’ve run a few marathons already, I still get nervous. You just never know what’s going to happen on race day…

Summary: 52 miles of running (assuming I run 26.2 miles tomorrow), 1 pilates class, daily core (mostly Caroline Girvan’s 12 min dead bug)

I’m linking up with Running on the Fly and Confessions of a Mother Runner; check out their blogs to connect with other fitness bloggers for workout ideas and inspiration!