3/31 to 4/5: Not Time to Taper Yet

I see a lot of marathon training plans online that have a three week taper, and it was a topic of discussion on this Sunday's long run with Kevin, Terry, and Jon.  I hadn't really been giving my taper much thought except for, "not yet." But that got me thinking...I have no idea why I think three weeks is too long. Kevin, Terry, and Jon have all been running a lot longer than I have, and thus have the personal experience to draw upon. But I've run 4 marathons thus far, with three buildups, and each one looks like a disaster!

- Boston 2012: my mileage was consistently in the mid to high 40's, and I started to have shin issues the week before the marathon, resulting in something like ~10 miles the week before the race...but still - cutting back when my mileage was in the 40's didn't really give me much wiggle room to actually taper. Verdict...sort-of-a-disaster.
- Cape 2012: averaged around 55mpw, but the mileage was spread out (my long runs were practically non existent!). I ended up cutting down from 56 to 52 to 38 to 22. And that looks reasonable, but I don't know...it doesn't really look reasonable. End result was certainly a disaster.
- Boston/Big Sur 2013: 'taper' of 36/52/28/29 - I had a stress fracture, so this wasn't even a taper. It was more like a period of "just don't get re-injured," but still disaster-ish.

So coming back to my current training. I've been averaging over 70mpw since the start of the new year - taperable miles IMO - but, to be honest, I haven't done any real planning. I didn't follow any type of schedule for this build up, only trying to do two things: run, and run some more. And without a schedule, I haven't given much thought to cutting back until now.

During the Sunday run conversation, I mentioned this and Terry gave some sound advice:

"just make sure to get 8 hours of sleep every night"

I'm sure he didn't mean that's all there is to it, but it really is great advice. And probably easy to overlook. So in this marathon taper, I plan on sleeping. I'll take it easy if my body feels like it needs to take it easy, even taking a day off once or twice, but I'm certain not to overlook the importance of rest.

...those were a lot of words without really saying much. I know what you're here for anyways. The STUFF!:

30-Mar		An Ras Mor 5k				12.75		17:24, a new PR
31-Mar		MLR		0:07:35		11		Garmin was a little funky, so I went faster and shorter than I wanted to.
1-Apr		Intervals				20.06		AM: 4m at 7:40/mile PM: 400/600/1000/1600/1000/600/400 - felt flat the whole time, but finished well. Plenty of warm up and cool down to get to ~16+ for the evening. (Might be missing the strides in the total).
2-Apr		Easy/		0:07:35		10.27		AM: 4.27m at 7:45/mile PM: 6m at 7:29/mile
3-Apr		Intervals		0:06:58		16.15		Why did I have wings at lunch!? So stupid. But still, this was a good run. I wasn't really thinking, "hit this exact pace!" - it was just trying to run hard for 8-10, with most of it done on the three hill route.
4-Apr		Recovery		0:07:27		4.08		AM Commute to work. A little quick.
5-Apr		Fresh Pond x 2		0:07:48		6.17		Ran Raleigh, then out on my own just keeping it relaxed.

Splits:

400-1:19ish

600-2:00.82

1000-3:34.05

1600-5:41.10

1000-3:28.11

600-1:58.42

400-1:08.56

Total: 80.48