The Physiology of Endurance Running Podcast · Dan Nash and Owain Zerilli

Road to Valencia 2025 - 1 week to go

·1 hr 32 min·5 clips

Jen asks, “How the hell am I meant to run a marathon next weekend?” after a run she thought felt awful.

The episode opens with the group one week out from Valencia and already laughing at their own race-week nerves. Everyone sounds busy. One host says he has been too busy to think about the race, apart from trying to get to Valencia on Thursday afternoon and squeeze in a jog. Another says the week has still been full of marathon anxiety, work, athlete chats, wrapping things up, and lab testing. A third shows up with three full Post-it notes of things to do and the very relatable plan of just sorting life out. That mood sets the tone for the rest of the conversation. The group talks through how much to run in the final week before a marathon. One person describes deliberately doing less because the day already included a long stint on their feet and a late night looked likely. The others keep circling the same question from different angles: what actually builds confidence, and what only adds fatigue. The conversation settles on the idea that fitness is basically fixed this close to race day. What still shifts is the mind. For one runner, too many easy jogs make them feel stale, which is why two sessions in a week still feels right. Another notes that race-pace work can be tempting, but it is not obviously useful physiologically if all it does is spike heart rate and feed nerves. There is a lot of honest self-checking aloud. One host points out that the session already done was not tiny, with about 45 minutes of work inside it. They also compare that with a week that added up to roughly six to nine miles total when recovery jogging is included. The practical advice keeps coming back to mental protection as much as physical maintenance. The show treats taper choices as individual, not moral. By the end, the group is back on the standard pre-race script: enjoy it, do not go out too fast, and do not try some new Spanish food on the morning of the marathon. A final joke about limoncello keeps the mood loose right to the close.

As heard by us

A steady taper-week look ahead to Valencia.

A week out from Valencia, the episode settles naturally into taper-week territory: nerves, packed calendars, and the familiar temptation to second-guess every easy run.

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Why you'd press play

You want race-week advice before a marathon without the fake certainty.

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