Taper time

A tapier, not a taper!

The taper is the part of the training schedule most runners really look forward to. The basic idea of a taper is top allow your body to recover sufficiently in order to run the race. A punishing program consisting in most cases of many hundreds of miles of training has prepared the body for the race to the point of exhaustion, the three weeks before the race are a gradual slowing down, reducing the intensity of training by half each week up until race day.

My taper was complicated by having to completely stop for 10 days due to picking up an injury, but I had scheduled a 13 mile run for last Sunday and I felt happy enough with my recovery to give it a go. I ran most of the 13 miles at or very close to my original planned race pace of 8 minutes per mile, I really felt that I needed to test myself a little bit, sitting around doing nothing can be frustrating to say the least and I had to see if my Achilles would hold up. You might think that this was a risky thing to do but if I hadn't felt fit enough to run I wouldn't have done the 13 miles anyway. I chose to include the first seven miles of the London Marathon route into my run, again familiarising myself with the slowest part of the course. I eventually finished my run in a pretty decent time of 1 hour 47 minutes, something that did my confidence no end of good. Apart from feeling a little stiffer than usual, I ran the whole route quite comfortably finding my rhythm and quietly starting to form my final strategy for race day.

That run was completed two weeks before race day, this coming Sunday my long run will consist of a 6 mile run, that's compared to my longest run of 22 miles. My total mileage for this week will be just under 20 miles, my mileage for the whole of next week will be 10 miles. If you think that during the height of my training I was doing a 10 mile run on my way home for work, you'll get an idea of just how easy the next 10 days will be by comparison.

As with most things to do with running there is something of an art to tapering before a big race but in all programs the goal is to feel fresh and ready for the race. There a few things you should do and things you shouldn't do, these are commonly referred to TAPER TRAPS. Generally you're aiming to relax, take a step back from pressurising yourself to hit those mileage or pace targets.

One thing I have already become aware of is a desperate need for high carbohydrate foods, I'm craving pasta, potatoes and rice. Having spent so much time working on getting my weight down I don't really want to put the pounds back on again, not this early anyway. The next thing to look out for, especially next week, will be something called recovery rebound, when I'll feel a desperate need to go out and run. This is basically exactly what I want, but I will have resist the temptation to go out and run 15 miles at 7 minutes a mile!