Did my taper ruin my marathon?

[Michael Laputka]

I did not hit my A, B or even C goal time for the Salt Lake Marathon.  I've been racking my brain for the last two weeks and I can't figure where I went wrong.  Now, I think it may have been a poor taper.  My weekly mileage from January went like this: 48 50 51 60 30 63 29 61 38 51 65 56 41 30 32 26.2.

The race was April 18, my last run was and easy 5 miler on Friday April 10th, 7 straight days of no running.  I would not normally taper like this the last week but I had some severe pain in my left knee and right ankle.  It was gone by race day and had no trouble during the race. 

From the moment the gun went off my legs felt heavy.  It was like I was carrying an extra 20 pounds on my back, I really felt it in my quads.  I was surprised by how "unrefreshed" my legs felt.  Did the 7 days off do more harm then good? 

[Jon Allen]

You took all 7 days off before the marathon?  If so, yes, that is very likely the reason your legs felt heavy.  Tapers usually reduce mileage, but don't take more than 1-2 days completely off that week.  Even if you are injured, I would suggest cross training or something to get your heartrate up and your muscles working some. 

I know when I take some time off due to injury, my first run or two back always feels very sluggish and hard.  After that initial break in, I feel better and can run normally.  Probably what happened to you.  I have occasionally had to take 1-2 weeks off right before a marathon due to injury.  I try to aqua jog, bike, do the elliptical- anything.  But not complete rest.

[Michael Laputka]

I didn't even cross train.  This was my 10th marathon, it's amazing how many things you can do wrong.  I'm glad I decided to join and participate in this blog. 

[Sean Sundwall]

Seven days off, especially with "relatively" low mileage almost certainly had a major impact. Also, mentally, not sure whether your injury was going to crop up at any moment doesn't help either. I am not a fan of the traditional 3-week taper. It's way overrated and from my experience, compeltely counter prodcuctive. For a marathon, I prefer a 10-14 day taper, reducing mileage but NOT intensity. Race week will still consist of two workouts, hard in intensity but shortened for recovery. Also, I personally prefer running the day before a race and making my day off two days prior otherwise I get heavy legs as well.
Also, if I had been injured and taken the seven days prior to the race off, I would have strongly considered forgoing the race altogether and look for a different one to run. I don't know if this was a reasonable option for you, but the recovery from a marathon is so significant that most can really only run 2-3 really good ones a year.

The good news is you have learned your lesson.

[Sasha Pachev]

For the record, I ran my worst (by far) marathon since coming to the US off a three week taper (Boise Great Potato 1999, 2:49:59). The crash was worse than even in one marathon I did a week after another (Rocket City 2003, 2:37:25) , which is in contention for the worst crash with another marathon (TOU 2005, 2:39:12) when I tapered more than usual the week before. One of my best marathons was run at the end of a 100 mile week (TOU 2007, 2:28:42).

During taper we are looking at a compromise between glycogen storage/fresh nervous system (benefits of tapering), and the loss of aerobic fitness (drawbacks of tapering). For somebody who does not run a whole lot of mileage tapering could cause enough of a drop of aerobic fitness that it is not compensated in other areas.

[Dallen]

For the record, I ran my worst (by far) marathon since coming to the US off a three week taper (Boise Great Potato 1999, 2:49:59).

For the record, I ran my best (by a little) marathon off a three week taper (Boise Great Potato 1999, 2:39:46). In fact, I did most of the 2 weeks before the race with Sahsa. It was too much taper for him, but just right for me. Races prior to that marathon indicated that Sasha should have beat me by a couple minutes, but at mile 17 he died and I felt good through the end. It shows that what works for one person won't work for another. Experiment a little and you will find what is best for you.

I will say that 6 out of 7 days off probably left you feeling stale, but I doubt it would completely ruin a marathon. I would look for another cause.

[Jeff Linger]

I was injured (somewhat, more of a flukey pain that freaked me out) and took 6 full days off before my 1st marathon. The taper didn't really hurt my performance (could I have done better with a better style taper? -- maybe, but I broke my goal of BQ by over 4 minutes). I'm wondering what's up with the 60+/30 2 week approach you hit during weeks 4,5,6,7,8,9. I've done hi-low 2 week plans before, but never so much as 50% cut between weeks. If we look at your entire training span, you had 4 weeks in the 60 miles, 5 weeks @ 48, 50, 51, 51 and 56, and (excluding the taper) 4 weeks @ 29, 30, 38, and 41. Then your taper was 30, 32, and a full week off then the race. I'm guessing it wasn't the week off before the marathon, but the fact that you only ran 41, 30, 32, week off and race in the 4 weeks leading up to the marathon.  Your training was VERY sporadic. I would think you could have done something more along the lines of 45 instead of the 30ish weeks during that 6 week stretch from week 4-9. And then your taper probably would have been more effective if you did something like 55, 45, 30 for your taper. Were you injured during those weeks you did between your 60+ mile weeks and why did you cut back so much over the last month?

[Josse]

I agree with Dallen you have to find what works for you with the taper.  I think it was more your training than anything but that is hard to say to.  I believe in recovery weeks but you need to do more hard week.  I take recovery week every 3-4 weeks and only cut the mileage 20-25%.  I have also ran my best marathon on the high mileage, but we all different beasts aren't we.

[Sasha Pachev]

I think the difference between me and Dallen was that he backed off to 45 miles a week from a lower mileage.

[Michael Laputka]

I was injured (somewhat, more of a flukey pain that freaked me out) and took 6 full days off before my 1st marathon. The taper didn't really hurt my performance (could I have done better with a better style taper? -- maybe, but I broke my goal of BQ by over 4 minutes). I'm wondering what's up with the 60+/30 2 week approach you hit during weeks 4,5,6,7,8,9. I've done hi-low 2 week plans before, but never so much as 50% cut between weeks. If we look at your entire training span, you had 4 weeks in the 60 miles, 5 weeks @ 48, 50, 51, 51 and 56, and (excluding the taper) 4 weeks @ 29, 30, 38, and 41. Then your taper was 30, 32, and a full week off then the race. I'm guessing it wasn't the week off before the marathon, but the fact that you only ran 41, 30, 32, week off and race in the 4 weeks leading up to the marathon.  Your training was VERY sporadic. I would think you could have done something more along the lines of 45 instead of the 30ish weeks during that 6 week stretch from week 4-9. And then your taper probably would have been more effective if you did something like 55, 45, 30 for your taper. Were you injured during those weeks you did between your 60+ mile weeks and why did you cut back so much over the last month?

60+/30 period I was racing during the lower mileage weeks.  I raced a 5, 10 and 15K every other week.  Some of you may recognize this as the Winter Series at Saltair.  That is how I found out about Sasha and this blog, we haven't met, but I know who he is.  Anyway, my plan was to back off a little, (maybe it was too much) the weeks of the race and I would run 20 milers during the off weeks.  I PR'd every race by a significant margin so I though I was on the right track.  Something went wrong between February 28th and April 15th.  My PR on the 15K was over 3 minutes, so I had big PR plans for the marathon.  No such luck so here I am back at the drawing board.  I told myself if I didn't smash my marathon PR that I'd join the blog and seek help.  Hopefully I will be able to help others in the future.

[Paul (RivertonPaul)]

I'm not close to local elite, but I've progressed to around 3:00 hours and I've found that I have better results not over tapering.

[Sasha Pachev]

Note that it is not uncommon for the half marathon speed to develop a lot quicker than the marathon speed even if you are doing everything right. Compared to 11 years ago my half right now is maybe 2 minutes faster, but the full is good 15 minutes faster. And 11 years ago I was no novice to running. Prior to that time I had run for 14 years never missing more than 3 consecutive days. I had very few weeks when I ran less than 40 miles. Even in my youth I considered a day to be incomplete if I had not run at least 6 miles. And even with this background coupled with running 70 miles a week consistently with all due diligence on long runs it still took some time to bridge the gap between the half and the full.

I theorize that the following changes took place in that time:

a) Better liver and other fuel system internal organs health due to the dietary improvements.

b) Drastic cardiovascular improvements. My max HR dropped from 191 to 173 in a period of 2 years (between 2002 and 2004).  It still took the same pace to reach it. What is interesting that my marathon pace HR has not changed - still around 157, but the pace was now faster. I theorize that the cardiovascular system became no longer the limiting factor of performance.

c)  Possibly because of b) an improvement in the ability to run dehydrated. Since cardio was no longer the limit, I could now sacrifice some blood volume to cool myself off. This comes handy in survival marathons like DesNews or Ogden after it was moved to a warmer date.

d) Possibly increased muscle glycogen storage, although I have no proof or even Sasha-science proof.

 e) Improved ability to run on fats. Unfortunately I do have Sasha-science proof. I have blown up in a couple of marathons to where the pace bottomed out at 7:05 and would not get any worse. It used to bottom out at 7:40.

 f) Improvement in muscle resistance to pounding. Not sure if it happened because of biomechanical adaptations or because the muscle itself became more durable. Either way, I am usually not sore after an all-out marathon and can often go for a jog, or even pace a slightly slower runner still in the race. My PR is pacing a guy headed for 2:52 (Cody) after finishing Ogden in 2:30. I have wondered if this is perhaps neither biomechanical nor muscular, but merely a reflection of the fact that due to neurological/endocrinal limits I am not able to take the muscles to the point of  tearing anymore.