Week 5 - Taper begins

This week marked the beginning of my two week taper period. Having only a 6 week training program limited me in my ability to adequately progress through the various training microcycles of a typical marathon training program. In organising my taper I decided to focus on a two week reduction in volume while keeping the intensity. I planned two days off for this week to help with recovery and freshening up for the marathon.

There are varying approaches for a taper period from gradual reductions in volume over four weeks to total rest for the last week or two. The goal is to allow the body to recover from all the training and be ready for peak performance on race day. Too much in the taper will make the legs feel heavy and not enough will leave the body feeling flat. Each individual person is different and therefore the taper period must be adapted to suit.

For me, I've found that a two or three week taper is ample. Any more and I get a bit stale. I try not to get too scientific and keep it relatively simple. I take an extra rest day at the beginning of the week and reduce the volume of each day. On Tuesday I only ran just over 14km and included some race pace work. I ran 6km on a flatish course with a few undulations. I had a comfortable warm up and ran each of the six continuous kilometres at below 4:10mins/km pace. The pace was reasonably comfortable to start and I had to consciously slow down a few times. I turned around after 3km and realised that I had a slight headwind. I found that I had to work a bit harder and was likely running harder than I should have been.

I didn't feel too comfortable on Wednesday. The taper period can be a strange time in the lead-up to a key race. It is during this period that athletes tend to get little niggles, pick up colds or just feel flat. On Wednesday I just felt flat. I had had a long day at work and my legs felt a bit swollen. It was strange to only run 8km but considering how I felt it was probably a good thing. It is quite tricky training towards a specific time goal, such as mine for a Sub3 in the marathon. The trouble is that every time I run I tend to worry about pace. In hindsight I was probably running too quickly for a recovery run and this may have contributed to my feeling flat.

Thursday was much better. I ran with the Rocky Road Runners and put in some change-ups where I varied my pace similar to that of running a fartlek session. Overall the run was a bit quicker than I had planned but I felt great and was really enjoying the run. The acclerations in pace help to 'wake up' my legs and stress different muscles in different ways compared with steady running at a constant pace.

After another rest on Friday I ran with the RRR on Saturday morning. For the long run it was quite short at only 21.12km but had some good pace for some of the kilometres. A large group of RRR's were there as there will be a large contingent going down for the half and full. Good luck to you all.

With only a week to go, I'm getting really excited and very much looking forward to racing.

Week 5

Monday - Rest Day
Tuesday - 14.05km - 1hr 03mins 59secs - 4:33mins/km - 6km at Sub 4:10 pace
Wednesday - 8.05km - 40mins 44secs - 5:04mins/km - easy flat run
Thursday - 12.20km - 55mins 34secss - 4:33mins/km - with Rocky Road Runners
Friday - Rest Day
Saturday - 21.12km - 1hr 39mins - 4:41mins/km - with Rocky Road Runners
Sunday - 11.50km - 57mins 44secs - 5:01mins/km - easyish group run

Week 5 totals - 66.92km - 5hrs 17mins 04secs - 4:44mins/km average pace

Check back in a few days for another blog where I will put down my thoughts on motivation and inspiration for training and racing.

Keep running.