Training’s done. Nothing you do this week makes you fitter. Plenty you can do to throw it away.

Over 300 races in and I can tell you the ones that went wrong were almost never about fitness. A shoe I’d not worn enough. A start I’d rushed. A night I didn’t sleep because I was hunting for a safety pin at midnight.

Monday to Wednesday

Short and easy. Thirty to forty minutes, and genuinely easy this time.

Stick a handful of strides in somewhere. Six times twenty seconds at 5k pace with a full walk back. Not a session. Just stops your legs forgetting what quick feels like.

Sort the boring stuff now while you’re calm. Number, pins, travel, parking, what time you’re leaving the house.

Thursday

Twenty minutes easy, or nothing. If you’re a streak runner this is a mile in the dark and that’s fine.

Lay your kit out. All of it. Vest, shorts, socks, shoes, watch, gels, number already pinned. Zero decisions on Sunday morning.

Friday

Rest, or the shortest jog you can be bothered with.

This is the important sleep. Two nights before is the one that counts, because nobody sleeps the night before and that’s fine. Get Friday right and Saturday’s tossing and turning doesn’t matter.

Saturday

Fifteen minutes very easy with a couple of strides. Or nothing.

Stay off your feet. Expo? Go in, get your number, come out. Don’t wander round for three hours collecting samples of things you’ll never eat.

Eat normally, bit more carbohydrate than usual. Not the night for a curry you’ve never had, however much you fancy it.

Race morning

Up three hours before if you can. Eat what you always eat. Get there earlier than you think you need to, because the car park queue at a big race is a rite of passage and it’s caught me out before.

Find the toilets early. Then find them again. Thirteen years in and I still can’t get off the loo on a race morning, so you’re in good company.

Warm up properly for anything up to a half. For a marathon, barely at all. The first two miles are your warm-up.

One rule for the first mile

Go slower than you want to.

You’re fresh, tapered, full of adrenaline and surrounded by people going off far too hard. Every second banked in the first three miles gets taken back with interest after twenty.

Let them go. You’ll see most of them again.

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Race planning, pacing and the taper are all part of one-to-one coaching. Someone to talk it through with in the week everybody overthinks.