Happy Taper
by Robert James Reese » November 11th, 2009 » 1 Comment
This weekend, it hit me: Philly is just around the corner. Bus tickets are bought, the taper has started for real, advanced weather forecasts have started showing up in my browsing history. Today, an email with my bib number (699) arrived. I feel surprisingly calm, surprisingly good.
Maybe it's that the taper hasn't gotten too intense yet. I'm still well over 50 miles for my rolling weekly total. (It will start to drop off significantly after my last 12 miler tomorrow.) Although I went through this fall without following a set training plan, I knew I needed some sort of structure for my taper so I hunted around and found this article which I've been loosely basing my final weeks on. It has me doing about 60% of my normal mileage this week.
I can't help but think back to last year and compare the way I'm feeling now with then. I know a lot of the calmness comes from feeling better about the training that I've put in. I've been light on speed work and didn't quite hit the weekly volume I was hoping for but, without question, this training cycle was better than what I put in last fall.
The fact that I have 3 marathons under my belt as opposed to 0 is also a huge boost. I feel like Chicago especially soothed my nerves. I may have spent a bit more physically than I should have there, but I feel like the mental rewards have been worth it.
I'm a little concerned with my weight. I had really want to drop down to around 150, but was still north of 155 when I stepped on the scale today. I feel like it's too late in the game to be aggressively dropping weight now, though, so I guess that's about what I'll be on race day. I've seen estimates of anywhere between 1 and 2 seconds per mile that you're slowed down by each extra pound. So, that's like an extra 3-6 minutes I could be tacking on just because I wasn't watching my diet close enough early on. Yikes. (Interestingly, though, an article Joe linked to this article in a comment on Flo's blog, shows my target weight as 161. But, I don't agree with that. Maybe that's a post for later...)
There are other things that should help balance that out, though. I haven't had a sip of alcohol since the 1st of the month (and won't until my post-marathon beer), cut carbonated beverages completely out of my diet (I never drink a lot of soda, but I would have seltzer water, etc.), replaced all my "normal" pasta intake with whole grain, and just in general have become very cautious about what I'm consuming. It probably won't make a big difference, but I feel like every bit will help.
Now it's just a matter of surviving this last week and a half, staying calm, and then going out there and hoping for a solid run. Deep breath.
Maybe it's that the taper hasn't gotten too intense yet. I'm still well over 50 miles for my rolling weekly total. (It will start to drop off significantly after my last 12 miler tomorrow.) Although I went through this fall without following a set training plan, I knew I needed some sort of structure for my taper so I hunted around and found this article which I've been loosely basing my final weeks on. It has me doing about 60% of my normal mileage this week.
I can't help but think back to last year and compare the way I'm feeling now with then. I know a lot of the calmness comes from feeling better about the training that I've put in. I've been light on speed work and didn't quite hit the weekly volume I was hoping for but, without question, this training cycle was better than what I put in last fall.
The fact that I have 3 marathons under my belt as opposed to 0 is also a huge boost. I feel like Chicago especially soothed my nerves. I may have spent a bit more physically than I should have there, but I feel like the mental rewards have been worth it.
I'm a little concerned with my weight. I had really want to drop down to around 150, but was still north of 155 when I stepped on the scale today. I feel like it's too late in the game to be aggressively dropping weight now, though, so I guess that's about what I'll be on race day. I've seen estimates of anywhere between 1 and 2 seconds per mile that you're slowed down by each extra pound. So, that's like an extra 3-6 minutes I could be tacking on just because I wasn't watching my diet close enough early on. Yikes. (Interestingly, though, an article Joe linked to this article in a comment on Flo's blog, shows my target weight as 161. But, I don't agree with that. Maybe that's a post for later...)
There are other things that should help balance that out, though. I haven't had a sip of alcohol since the 1st of the month (and won't until my post-marathon beer), cut carbonated beverages completely out of my diet (I never drink a lot of soda, but I would have seltzer water, etc.), replaced all my "normal" pasta intake with whole grain, and just in general have become very cautious about what I'm consuming. It probably won't make a big difference, but I feel like every bit will help.
Now it's just a matter of surviving this last week and a half, staying calm, and then going out there and hoping for a solid run. Deep breath.
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