Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Eat my shorts, Dr. Atkins.

Well, here I am in Copenhagen, which is (I'm told) just about the cheapest capital in the Nordic universe - if so, then remind me never to try eating out in Oslo. I can remember paying for a meal once in Reykjavik, but only because I had to make special arrangements with my bank to finance it - it should all be paid off by 2015 at this rate, but that's dependent on what happens to interest rates. I think what I'm getting at here is that it's not the cheapest city in the world, but then again neither is anywhere in this corner of northern Europe.

Over the last few days I've eaten inordinate amounts of pasta in order to carbo load in the hope that my muscles and liver are now stuffed with yummy glycogen, although it has to be said that restaurant portions of pasta are not good for these purposes. Thursday night was probably the most impressive - I boiled up 300g of pasta and scoffed the lot, and very enjoyable it was too, not to mention over 70% carbohydrate by weight. I have my vest with my number pinned to it, I have my timing chip, I have the pair of shoes in which I've got the most experience of running longer distances, I have my shorts, I have energy gels. There's probably not much else I can do now other than get up in the morning, have a light breakfast and wander down to the start. We'll just have to see how it goes. Fingers crossed, etc - my plan is to start somewhere near the four-hour pacers, but if it becomes apparent that that's overambitious I'll switch into "just finish" mode and take as long as it takes.

In the meantime, my room's got a wonderful view of the lines heading into Copenhagen's main station...