Thanks for your testmony, lioness, and your good wishes.

This thread has certainly got me thinking. I'm impressed by the range of strategies that contemporary marathoners deploy. Most of them clearly involve consuming some calories during the race: gels, or sport drinks. Most of them also involve some sort of pre-race meal. I realize now that my thread-starting post may have needlessly muddied the waters. I meant to say simply that I was going to run this marathon as I'd run my last marathon and all my previous marathons: on a empty stomach primed only by a cup of coffee, with only water along the way. Since my last marathon was in 1983, this gave my protocol, I assumed, a kind of Rip Van Winkle vibe in the brave new world of carbs-on-the-run. And I was OK with that. In fact, I wanted to steer clear of what seemed to me like a needless, even neurotic attachment to, and anxiety about, taking the proper number of gels at the proper mile point. (I hope all here will agree with me that there is a certain kind of first-time marathoner who is terribly anxious about how and when to take GU.) I'm more a minimalist than not; caffeine and water were all I wanted to worry about.

What I've discovered is two things: 1) my "old school" approach was in fact slightly retro even in 1983, since, as several posters reminded me, many people back then drank Gatorade, ERG, difizzed Coke, and other improvised concoctions, although gels had not yet been invented; and 2) there's nothing wrong with adapting what I already DO do to the race I'm about to run.

Since I've taken a few prunes before some of my longer runs, and since the Cliff Bar I at 45 minutes before this morning's 9-miler digested just fine, I see no reason not to have a small pre-race meal about 2 hours before the starting line. I'll stash a small handful of prunes in my running shorts (baggied!) and will eat a few of those as needed. Too, since Gatorade is something I drink after every summer run, I see no reason not to drink it when it's offered, beginning at the halfway point. When in doubt, I'll under-use rather than over-use these props, and will always trust my gut-instincts (literally) and the training miles I've put in.

One week to go.