Welcome to part 2 of my 26 tips on how to run a marathon!
Last time we focused mainly on your marathon training and random pre-race stuff, but today we are going to go over the all important week or so before the race and the race day itself. Here we go…
14. Taper capers
Tapering: If you haven’t heard of this strange word before, it simply means ramping down your training schedule as you lead into the weeks before a big race. This is both in terms of distance and speed. There are a few reasons for this:
- Avoid injuries before the big day which would be devastating having trained so long and hard for it.
- Give you body time to recover and build energy and strength up before the big run.
- You deserve a bit of rest after all of the effort of training, right?! 🙂
I would say your last long run should be around 8-12 miles 1 week before the Marathon and then once you are inside a week just do one or two short and brisk jogs of 3-5 miles. Personally I wouldn’t run at all the day before but some people seem to find that useful also. I’d maybe go for a walk instead to keep the legs loose and obviously don’t do anything else too energetic or dangerous! Although you do want to do something. The worse thing is keeping the day completely free so all you have to do is sit around waiting and freaking out about the whole thing, so maybe just book in to see some friends or family to keep your mind off of it.
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