Taper Madness

Yes its that time of the year again, no not football season (although I am happy its finally here again), Marathon Taper Madness!!! For those of you who have never experienced the joys of running and thus the agony of tapering for a big race let me explain... A typical marathon training schedule is roughly 18 weeks, in which you continuously build your mileage and number of days running per week. If your like me you also added cycling this summer for cross training to reduce the wear and tear that running can cause, and now its the week before the QC Marathon and its time to ease it back to save my legs, conserve energy and maintain optimal hydration levels. All this is well and good for Sunday but for Monday - Saturday a person who is accustomed to exercising 1-2 hours a day 6 days a week dropping down to 2-3 workouts for 30-45 mins has a lot of unspent energy that in my case comes out as anxiety, edginess, and general grumpy behavior. My last hard work out was yesterday, a 40 mile bike ride, which left we pretty tired and sore this morning, so I ditched my workout this morning and slept in which in the long run is probably the best thing I could have done.

The worst part of tapering is not the increased anxiety from lack of exercise, or the sudden (and necessary) weight gain, but the way I suddenly feel sick, sore and tired all in a matter of a few days. This happened to me last year the week before my marathon, and it also happened the week before my MMA fight the year before last. The weeks and months of endless training, finally catch up to you at the first hint of a slow down, like being sick was just sitting back waiting for its moment when you were most vulnerable and than decided to attack. I suppose it is probably a good thing to feel a little bit under the weather while tapering, it forces you to sleep a little more, eat a little healthier, cut back on training, nothing I do training wise this week is going to aid my performance, but it certainly could hinder if I went to hard or did too much.

So for now, cutting back on training, sleeping a little more, and hopefully relaxing a little bit is what the training schedule calls for this week, hopefully it pays off on Sunday, I'm hoping to go under 4 hours this year, but I'd be happy at 4:05 as well. Last year I set 3 goals for the marathon this year I'll do the same.
1. Finish under 4 hrs.
2. Run the entire race (last year I ran everything except the water stations where I walked 30-45 secs)
3. Have as much fun as last year

Do today what others won't, so tomorrow you can do what others can't.