Sunday run with HIVE RUN race shirt! Breaking HM pr

Hi all! Welcome to my running blog! Here I keep you up to date with my progress towards the NN Marathon Rotterdam 2025 that will be here in 7 days on april 13th.

With 7 days to go my main objective is to do race preperation which is a mix of different aspects:

planning; making the checklist, what to do on night before race (for example charging watch, headset)
resting and recovery; reducing the weekly kilometers, resting more. Swapping difficult runs with recovery runs. Sleeping more.
carboloading - more on this topic next week - will start 4 days before the run.
speed work: with the reduction in kilometers you would want to maintain the same intensity. This means you will need to do atleast some zone 3 runs in your last few weeks.
dress rehearsal: here you simulate your planned race. Wear all the gear you would bring to the race and check if you need to make small adjustments to the plan!

Dress rehearsal
Today I tried to simulate next weeks race. Waking up at 6 to follow my early morning schedule that provides enough time to eat, drink and go to the bathroom before the run.

Following my nutrition plan I took my first isotonic energy gel 30 min before my run.

Wearing the new Hive Run race shirt and a shorts that holds 10 gels + salt tabs (and my phone) it felt good! At the early morning it was cold wearing only a tanktop but after a few kilometers it felt really good! (This provided me great feedback that I need to bring some warm clothes for close to the race). I am still considering my pace - today I went a little faster compared to planned pace and that did feel good - although it is only half the didtance and the marathon honestly really starts at kilometer 32. So I might readjust my planned pace to something between my pace today and my previously planned pace (4:45) => 4:35 / km?

Another great insight I got was with regards to the nutrition plan:

The can which I use to carry the salt tabs is making distracting sounds (as it is made from metal) so I will try to tape the inside to reduce that sound.
Where my plan was to take a gel every 20 min, I might swap that to every 5km (+/- 23km) that would would allow me to combine the gel and drinking points and have less distractions from the run.