Last year--my first marathon--I just ate whatever they handed out and drank at almost all the hydration points, whether it was water or that unpredictably-mixed sports drink they were serving. I don't think I have enough experience yet as a runner to do anything more this year.
I will say that I have learned a lot from other runners about nutrition, including a race saving risk that I had to take before my first marathon. For perspective, I sometimes have a difficult time keeping any food down before 8:00am. Obviously, this is a bad point to start with for races, so for years, my go to half marathon breakfast had been applesauce. Problem is that since I was running Dopey, 3 consecutive mornings of applesauce were telling me that there was no way I could handle applesauce 4 mornings in a row. Desperately, I remembered so many people saying that their pre race breakfast was a plain bagel with peanut butter. Since I like peanut butter and bagels are fine, I decided to "break" the nothing new on race day rule. My old standby would not work, so that's bad. Nothing before a marathon, especially my first is probably worse, so I went with what my body was telling me.
Two pieces of good news here. First it worked. Second it worked so well that it is my new race day breakfast.
On the course, I take a Huma gel every 45 minutes and then work whatever nutrition is offered along the course into the mix. I used to eat clif bloks, but was struggling to take enough fuel in during marathon training. Huma gels did the trick. I may not finish every banana along the course, but I know they're important nutrition so I finish what I can until my body says "no more."
SAFD: Has to be The Jungle Book. My dad took me and my middle brother to see it in the theater when it first came out. I was 6 at the time and got very upset and was crying when Baloo had “died”. My dad held me in his lap to comfort me until Baloo was alive again. My favorite memory of any movie ever!
Reminds of the third time I saw The Rise of Skywalker in theaters. A little girl next to me was absolutely devastated and heartbroken when Chewbacca was "killed." It took a lot of willpower not to tell her that it would be okay and Chewbacca was not really dead.
SAFD: I'm going "oldest school" with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Indicative of the creative genius of Disney Studios and the technological advancements in animation that were introduced with that movie.
I'm not sure we fully appreciate just how important Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is to animation. At the time it was a huge risk. People thought it would devastate the studio. Hollywood called it Walt's Folly. Then we know what happened. No matter what your favorite animated movie is, it owes a huge debt to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
SAFD: And while I'm also unsure as to what constitutes old school, mine is Sleeping Beauty, which I'm sure is shocking given my avatar on these boards. The film is absolutely gorgeous and the dragon fight sequence remains one of the greatest things I have ever seen in theaters. In 2008, in advance of the films 50th anniversary, Disney gave it a 3 week run at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Even though I know every beat of the movie very well, the dragon fight sequence felt incredibly exciting and exhilarating on the big screen.