I’ve done numerous ultras, but never “just” a marathon.
Frankly, I am unsure what I need to do during the final 7-10 days. HELP!
My weekly mileage has been 45-60 miles and now I need a reduction in preparation for the 26.2.
PS: No worries, I have another Ultra scheduled for April (50 mi trail).
I like the 3 week taper of about 75%, 50%, 25%. Some people think that is cutting back too much. Either way don’t cut out all the quality stuff, just back off on mileage. In my opinion anything substantial in the week before the race is only going to hurt you. Cutting back this much might make you feel lousy, but on race morning you will feel great. Just don’t go out too fast.
Everybody’s different so this might not be right for you but in my experience a long taper leads to staleness. Have you ever been doing solid, high running mileage and then had some minor injury or other inconvenience force you to cutback for a week or so? Then when you get things going again, suddenly you feel invincible. That’s the effect you are trying to capture during taper, just a bit more.
My recommendation – again purely one data point but it’s based off of many standalone marathons – is that you should go for the short, steep taper. 10 days to 2 weeks, tops. By taper I’m talking weekly mileage only. Don’t increase your intensity to compensate for reduced mileage. It’s tempting but don’t. Keep mileage going normally until then and then cut it back sharply. Take 2 to 3 days completely off during that taper (at least). I like to do my final long run (with 10-12 miles at goal pace) two weeks out but it might be safer to do it 3 weeks out. Your final hard workout should probably be something like Tuesday before a Sunday marathon. It should be something that challenges you a little but not much. What I do that day is this workout: 4800 meters continuous on the track (think of it as 6x800), starting out with the first 800 at your goal marathon pace and then running each successive 800 four seconds faster than the previous. You effectively finish up slightly faster than what Daniels would call your threshold pace.
I try to take the day two days before the race completely off. The day before the race, I do 3 or 4 miles easy but maybe one of them at goal race pace.
Whatever, you do, keep in mind, that from 2-3 weeks out, there’s very little you can do to improve your marathon performance and countless things you can do to hurt it.
Very good info & insight.
Thank you.
There was some good marathon tapering tips last year in Runner’s world. They wrote about a method that incorporates lower distance, in the last couple weeks, but keep up with some good fast intervals. I tried this out last year prior to Philly. In the last two weeks, I lowered my long run day down 10mi (then to 7mi one week out).
Both weeks included 1mile intervals (just one day each week). In between days were just shorter runs (trying to finish the last mile of each a a decent clip (~target marathon pace).
Example:
Thursday (11 days before race)…3x1mile intervals (5k pace or better) with huge rest in between.
Thursday (4 days before race)…1 x 1mile interval (sub 5k pace again). Then, no running 2 days prior to the race.
I found that having these fast short days in the weeks ahead of the race helped to make marathon race pace feel manageable.
My race time was 5 minutes faster in 2010 compared to 2009.
There are numerous tapers out there. Never underestimate how much good some serious rest can do.
Typically you want to maintain some intensity, reduce duration, volume and a small reduction in frequency. A day off or two a few days before a race never hurt anyone.
A good deal of the athletes at the Olympics hit their peak on the plane ride home b/c they had to get those last few workouts in. Don’t be that athlete.
I try to take the day two days before the race completely off. The day before the race, I do 3 or 4 miles easy but maybe one of them at goal race pace.
Whatever, you do, keep in mind, that from 2-3 weeks out, there’s very little you can do to improve your marathon performance and countless things you can do to hurt it.
This is all that you really need to know about the taper for a marathon (especially the second point). The rest depends entirely on training history and personal preference - neither of which can be defined in a generic taper plan. If you feel like you’re doing too much, then you probably are. If you feel like you’re not doing enough, then your body is ready to go. I prefer to keep the taper short (say 10-12 days) in order to minimize the lilkelihood of “management” errors.