Taper

[Hille]

I will be running the St. George Marathon here in a few weeks.  My big question at this point is about the taper over these last 3 weeks.  Since running the DesNews Marathon, I have increased my weekly mileage with hopes to improve on my time.  I have been averaging 50-60 miles a week, with a high of around 70 this week with my remaining scheduled runs.  I plan to run my last long run of 20-22 miles on Saturday, 3 weeks before STG.  I was planning on a traditional taper by reducing my mileage by 20%, 40% and 60% in the weeks prior to the race.  Reading some previous posts on the tapering, it seems like this may be too much.  Any advice or further thought to an appropriate plan for my taper would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

[allie]

just like in training, everyone responds differently to the taper. i would say your 20, 40, 60 rule of thumb looks reasonable, but you may discover that you are feeling like you need more or less mileage than that at any given time over the next three weeks. i think it's just a matter of trial and error until you figure out how your body best responds to the reduction in mileage.

i usually run my highest mileage of the training cycle three weeks out, followed by a 20% cut the next week, but only a 15% cut when you are looking at my average mileage for the training cycle. i keep my schedule mostly normal and try to get one or two runs in of 10 miles or more (two weeks out). in the final week, my mileage is cut by 70% from the peak week and 65% from the average MPW (that seems high, but does not include the mileage from the actual marathon --if the marathon is included the mileage cut for the taper week is only about 25%). so i guess it depends on how you are defining that 60% in the final week. i'll usually take two days off within the seven day period before the race. the others days are 8, 6, 5, 2-3...race.

good luck to you at SG.

[Kam]

allie, thank you for posting this taper plan.  I will follow it, and use you as the scapegoat if things don't turn out well at my next marathon.  I've learned from work that assigning blame is most important, so now I've got that covered.