Gorgeous Sunday up here in Logan. Too nice to stay inside all day. Took a nice autumn walk with my wife. Later, jogged out to LHS rec fields and did 4x200m strides (35, 33, 33, 32). They felt good and snappy. I spent some time last night and today transferring my Polar training log over to the Blog for the 2004 running season, including race reports. So now I have 2003, 2004, and most of 2006 posted. I'll fill the gap probably next weekend. Looking back at 2004, I did A LOT more mileage than in 2003, and I expected it to pay off and run some really fast times...but that's not what happened. In fact, 2004 was probably my worst racing season. Despite holding steady to 80-100 mile weeks for most of the summer, my times were slower compared to 2003, from 5k to marathon. This means either 1)I'm not meant to do that high of mileage; or 2)I didn't see the fruits of my labor immediately; or 3)some of my training methodology was wrong. I feel that the reality was a combination of all those reasons. When I do 100-mile weeks, I get fatigued, and don't race or work out well. However, I feel that all mieage adds to "lifetime base" and will pay off in later years. 2005 for me was a really good racing year, despite low mileage, and I think that the high mileage I did in 2004 set me up for the Grand Slam in 2005. Finally, most of my workouts in 2004 were geared toward VO2 Max (short intervals). I did little threshold and marathon-pace running, so it's no wonder that I crashed and burned at TOU that year; my body could not sustain a long effort nor store/burn fuel efficiently. Although I was doing more mileage in 2004, I still lacked any thoughtful training methodology, and just thought that if I ran lots of mileage and did track intervals, that I would become fast at all distances...immediately. The training element that killed me the most for the 2004 TOU race was my taper. I went from doing 90-100 mile/weeks through August, to 35-45 miles/week in the two weeks before TOU. I felt led to do so because I felt fatigued from the mileage and I didn't know any better. But the taper was too sharp (50-60% cut) and sustained over too long a period of time (2 full weeks). During the 2006 Grand Slam, I experimented with great success with 10-20% tapers sustained over one week. For example, if I had been running 60 mpw, I would taper to 50 miles in the week preceding the marathon. I now believe that a key to good training is not to fatigue yourself, and if you are not fatigued there is no need to taper for longer than a week, or to cut your miles by more than 10-20%. Hard-gained fitness can be lost over long tapers. I see marathon programs advocating 3-week tapers, and that just seems wrong. If one's body is so broken down that one needs three weeks to mend, replenish, and fuel it, then the training program is fundamentally flawed to begin with. Everyone is different, of course, and have different needs, but it seems that if one is in good health, has trained within their limits, and fuels their body healthily, then 1 week or maybe 2 weeks at the very most should be sufficient to run an optimal marathon. Those are my Sunday blog thoughts. Other thoughts and comments on optimal tapering are welcome. | 