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Rituals are important, even for non superstitious people: I wore the same shirt for every single fencing competition for nearly 10 years, until it was so worn there was no shirt left. Did it work? Not always, but I needed to know that I was wearing my lucky shirt. Here are some people with their own rituals for marathon day:

“Okay, I’m going to actually say this and it’s going end up in a blog, right?” she said, laughing. “But I’ll say it. I have to wear green underwear.” Her other thing? She always wears a purple skirt to race.

“I put my right sock on first, and then my right shoe before I put on the left,” he said this week. He will also eat the same meal he has eaten every game day: a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese and sliced tomato, along with orange juice and a banana.

He will order mixed vegetables and plenty of injera bread at the Ethiopian Restaurant near his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “I keep thinking that maybe the injera will help me to run like Geb,” Kleckner said in an e-mail, referring to Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie, the world-record holder in the marathon, who is running New York for the first time.

The defending marathon champion, Meb Keflezighi, has to have spaghetti with red sauce the night before the marathon. He and his family escaped war-torn Eritrea and lived in Milan for a few years before coming to San Diego, and the Italian influence is ever-present in his rituals.

As for me, I don't have much of a running ritual: part of why I enjoy running so much is that it's so different from competitive fencing I had done for so long. I am not competing against anyone but myself, my own fears and limitations, my own mind. This training season, there have been a lot of hard races and training runs: bad weather, not enough sleep, high or low temperatures, humidity, freezing rain... but, there was one particularly great race. It was the 18 mile marathon tune-up 7 weeks ago. I had run much faster than I thought I could for that long, and at the end, I had enough left to think I could have done more. I felt great the whole time! So what did I do right?

Here is what I tried to replicate from that weekend: today, I ate a lot! Omelette for breakfast, pasta for lunch, and more pasta for dinner. Chicken parm with garlic bread and a small glass of Port wine with chocolate ice cream to top it up with. I also went for a shorter jog: Jana, the other marathoner from the floor in the lab told me that the atmosphere in Central Park was just so exciting, so I had to check it out. I did a small loop around the South part of the park, passed the 25 mile mark, and then went over to the finish line. The flags of all the participating countries are lined up before the finish line: I slightly touched the Hungarian flag on the right side. They didn't let people cross the finish line - save that one for tomorrow - but it was still such a thrill to be there. There were so many people taking pictures and walking around that I couldn't even run on that part of the road. Oh, it was such a thrill! And so incredible that I'll be running the NYC Marathon for real tomorrow!!! In 12 hours, in fact, I'll be running across the Verrazano Bridge already.

1 day left!! READY!!!!