Taper and Improvement

[Jeff Linger]

Throwing a question out there. You've put in the training. You've pounded the pavement and logged the miles. Its time to taper and start resting up, letting those muscles heal and get ready. What types of workouts should one focus on to not only maintain, but if possible, continue to improve as one approaches marathon race day without bringing the risk of injury/strain/fatigue?

[Sasha Pachev]

Train normally until you have two weeks left. Cut back about 20% of volume, but maintain, and maybe even slightly increase the intensity with two weeks to go. Start cutting back for real with a week to go. Not so much in the first three days, but quite a bit in the last three.

Also note that while tapering does make a difference, running a marathon completely untapered is really not that much slower that with a perfect taper. You could easily end up running worse that untapered by goofing your taper up on the side of cutting back too much and too early. Also over-anxious people may do worse even with a physiologically perfect taper as cutting back the miles may take away their stress-coping mechanism and they may just psyche themselves out.

If you find yourself anxious about the upcoming race (e.g you are searching the net, asking questions, wondering about how things are going to go, are concerned about detail, etc), you would do very well treating your marathon as a long training run. No taper, maybe cut back the length of your run in half the day before, and really focus on sleep (get to bed early) and not missing your regular meals, and eating to satiation the week before.

[adam]

I agree with what Sasha said here. Tapering helps if done right, but sometimes you can do better when you aren't so concerned about every little thing during the week/days before. If you are running significant miles the months before your marathon, and have been running well on your long runs without tapering for those, then you probably won't hurt yourself in the race by running normal during the week of the race and cutting back on some of the intensity and miles a few days out to keep fresh.

I especially believe in running something normal the day before a race, just like something you would run the day before or after a hard workout. If you would normally feel stressed because you only ran 4 miles one day, and not your normal doubles or whatever, you probably aren't going to like it when you do that during a taper. Even after you try and convice yourself it's good for you, you still can feel more stressed than usual. So to counteract that stress feeling, go out easy for a bit longer run or still run doubles and just do much less. But do something that makes your body feel as it normally does, fresh and happy. Your body is used to that, and will be ready to roll on race day.

Just ask yourself this: How many times have you ran well some random day during training with what felt like no effort at all? You weren't thinking about running so well the weeks before that day, didn't taper, and you felt relaxed and great. Granted, tapering may help you reproduce this effect, but if it the cutdown is giving you more time to think too much and stress yourself out, it may not help as much. Your training and mindset is what is going to make the bulk of the race happen for you. During a race you don't think "I should have run x less miles during my taper", but rather, "I am glad I did so many miles in training, because I am flying today!".






 

[Josse]

I agree with what has been said.  I always do a 3 week taper and feel like it is way to long.  I am going to try doing a shorter tamper because of the reasons Sasha and Adam pointed out. 

[Adam R Wende]

I have tried one- two- and three- week tapers. All have had their pluses and minuses. I think the consistent thing in the advice above and the thing I'll third is getting the right sleep. However, the two night out rule is important. I've had some of my best performances with almost no sleep the night before the race as long as the week building up to it was restful... Workouts I normally cut out about three-four days prior but even the last workouts before a marathon are equal intensity bout 1/2 to 1/3 the distance. Normally I like to do something easy at pace to remind myself that I am ready to run this and how easy it feels when you are only doing it a mile or even a 1/4 mile at a time.

[Logan Fielding]

The most important night of sleep the week of the marathon is two nights before the race and not the night before.