I just finished up a second BQing marathon within a month. I had posted a bit on Letsrun.com about how best to approach my optomistic winter marthoning schedule and got several responses that “tapers were for pu$$ies.” I have read Daniels’ Running Formula and Advanced Marathoning, both of which discuss the importance of the taper. I went with a comfortable 2 week taper on the first one, but considering I only had a month between the two, I just rested a few days before the second. I keep my training log on slowtwitch, so check it out if you are interested.
But the meat of the story is that it put a big psychological drain on me without really effecting my performance. Truthfully, I feel as though I had a better performance for the second race than the first despite being less prepared and rested.
I have another race coming up in 5 weeks and I am still unsure how I will precede. I dont believe that a taper for the next race will produce a peak. I plan to just listen to my body and rest/train accordingly.
Has anyone else had similiar experiences?
Are tapers for pu$$ies?
The length and volume of the taper depends on how much you’re training. It’s going to look very different for someone running 120 miles a week vs. 40 miles a week. Same thing for triathlon, 12 hrs a week vrs 30 hrs a week don’t require the same taper.
Depending on the answer, technically you did taper for the second race - when you tapered for the first - you just stretched it out.
I did Kona + IMAZ this year. I tapered/peaked for Kona, and then did a reduced maintenance training cycle to maintain my form until IMAZ.
+++
To your specific question, I don’t think tapers are for wimps, additionally there is a proven physiologic benefit to tapering that you can’t argue, but I do think that people have a tendency to over-taper and arrive at their A-race having given up to much fitness and are under-prepared for the race. Which is why I think that people will often perform better at the second race because they “don’t taper”, and actually arrive at the second race with appropriate fitness.
Taper is about giving your body the opportunity to recover and repair itself from the hard work you have done, but you can’t allow it to begin to shed fitness - which it will do eagerly because a high level of fitness is counter-productive to survival.
jonnyo summed it up well a while back “Taper isn’t easy”
I agree with the limited need for a taper for anyone not doing major miles. I would even say that 70 miles per week only requires the exclusion of the long run during the week prior to the marathon.
Edit to add my 4 weeks leading up to the marathon:
Between the races, I returned to running 2 days after the first race, hit my lifetime biggest training volume (80 mpw) with second week, and was just above my 2 month average weekly volume for the third. The fourth week I took 2 days off and a few easy days before the race.
I also picked back up cycling in there spending a few hours on the trainer per week doing the Endurnace Nation outseason program.
Believe about 1% of what you read on Letsrun. And this one is part of the 99%. (I like the letsrun forum, by the way. But there is a lot of noise and just plain BS.)
Letsrun is a forum filled with nonsensical teenage boys who like to feel important. Be very careful with advice you take from that website. Some of it is ok, but a lot of it needs to be filter treated.
Why are you running so many marathons so closely together?
If you’re worried about Boston, it sounds like you’re interested in performance and not just finishing.
If that’s the case, run less races and taper longer for the ones that matter.
If your max week ever was 80miles that I’d say the one week taper it sounds like you took before the second race was a decent taper.
Averaging 90 mpw for a couple of months, the two week tapers I did, seemed great (80% the first week, then 40-50% the second week).
I was training for B2B and hurt my knee cycling. Interestingly, I only had issues cycling. I had spent so much time invested in one race, I was butt hurt about not getting to do it. Looking for some something to spend my fitness on, I found the Alabama 3N3 Challenge. (3 marathons in ~9 weeks) I signed up out of frustration, really. I ended up completeing B2B and decide to give the marathons a go too. I’ve got one left and have full intentions of being the last one on course. I may pack a cooler.
Letsrun is a forum filled with non-nonsensical teenage boys who like to feel important. Be very careful with advice you take from that website. Some of it is ok, but a lot of it needs to be filter treated.
ST is a forum filled with non-nonsensical adult men who like to feel important. Be very careful with advice you take from that website. Some of it is ok, but a lot of it needs to be filter treated
Haha stupid spellcheck. The best advice I have for the OP is that be careful when taking advice from so-called “experts” be sure you know the source and whom it’s coming from.
Taper is about giving your body the opportunity to recover and repair itself from the hard work you have done, but you can’t allow it to begin to shed fitness - which it will do eagerly because a high level of fitness is counter-productive to survival.
Could you please elaborate on that statement? Why is a high level of fitness counterproductive to survival? And what are you defining survival as?
I personally feel that I have to taper my intensity; not my distances or hours. I feel that I can adapt to a distance or hours spent, but intensity and proper form can kill a man. I like rest and ALL humans require it. When I start hitting the track and jumping into the fast lane at the pool, I know I can only keep it going properly for about 8-10 weeks. 10 days from my A race (triathlon) I have to back off or I will be injured, sick and or freezing cold during my race or workout.
Is this the old saying? I would rather show up and race 20% under trained then over trained any day.
Not trying to prove you wrong, just hadn’t seen that before. With all the talk of the health benefits associated with being fit, it’s not often described as potentially being detrimental to survival…although in the context you present it survival seems to have more of a hunter-gatherer aspect to it.
Most people under train & over rest. And that’s before they even get around to the tapering part.
I suppose that most peopl do this out of ignorance. How would one know if they fell into this category?
