Most people do a 2 week marathon taper. Since my marathon is about two weeks away, this past week was my first week of tapering.
For those not familiar, tapering is what you do three weeks before a marathon. It starts right after your longest run, which is generally 20 miles.
After this long run, you have to start cutting back on the weekly mileage so you feel your best race day.
For me, this flies in the face of what my heart wants to do.
I want to squeeze every last minute out my training. I want to keep my mileage high so I feel more confident about my ability to complete the marathon when I standing in the race corral waiting for the gun to go off.
And while that makes sense in my head, the truth is that it doesn’t make sense for my body.
All marathon coaches and training plans reinforce the same idea. Three weeks before a marathon your body has done the training it needs.
(Hopefully) you’ve build up the ability to run 20 miles. You won’t lose this ability over the next three weeks as you cut down on mileage.
But by tapering you give your body the chance to rest more and heal from any muscle damage that happened the week of your highest mileage.
In my case, the week of May 14- 20 was my highest weekly mileage. That week I ran 47.5 miles, which included my 20 mile long run.
So this week, I had start tapering. A good rule of thumb is to cut back 20% from your highest mileage week.
That means this week, I should run 36 miles.
So despite my strong desire to go out and run another 20 miles tomorrow, I’ll be cutting it back to 16.
In addition, I took two rest days this week, and my recovery run on Sunday will be a short two miles.
So far, the best tapering advice came from (not a surprise) this Runner’s World article. For those who are about to head into their marathon, I highly recommend giving it a read.
The big highlights- Cut the mileage. Get more rest. Keep eating well.
And my tip- KEEP STRETCHING!!!
And get ready, you’ve done all this work- your victory lap (aka the marathon) is almost here!!!
