May
13
Maintaining Sanity during the Taper
Any experienced marathon runner has mixed feelings about the taper. While nominally a period of rest and recovery in advance of the marathon, it is also a period marked by an abundance of nervous energy or, at the extreme, advancing paranoia regarding your preparedness for the marathon.
- You have to do something with the extra time and energy
Regardless of your outlook, it is clear that the taper is necessary, and attempting to do more than just some light maintenance runs is counter-productive. It’s too late to make significant gains in your training if you haven’t put the work in to date, so you might as well recover. When approached with the right perspective, the taper can be a fun period, one that reminds you of the pure joy of running without a specific goal (other than not over-doing it) in mind. With that thought, here are 5 tips on how to make your taper more enjoyable. One upshot of all these experiments is that they may yield ideas to enhance your regular training routine.
Explore New Routes
If you train near your home or office, you have probably run the same routes a dozen times or more each. This is the opportunity to take off in new directions, exploring possibilities at a local park or trail, a different neighborhood, or just going as far in one direction as your training schedule permits. Even reversing your typical routes can provide some much-needed variety.
Run at Different Times
If you are normally a predawn runner, short taper runs provide the opportunity to experiment with lunch or evening runs. In the light of day, you have the opportunity to take in scenery that you often miss in the pre-dawn hours – plus, getting the extra sleep will help with recovery. The reverse also holds true; if you typically run during the day, you may enjoy the feeling of getting your training in before breakfast, maybe timing your outing so you can experience the unbridled joy and peace of the dawn.
Add Variety to Speed Work
If you subscribe to the theory that you taper distance, not intensity, then speed work can certainly be a part of this period. This is a great opportunity to experiment with different formats, such as Yasso 800’s if you typically do mile intervals, or ladder-style workouts that change the distance of each interval; Susan D. on Dailymile likes to do a 1600/1200/800/600/400/200 routine, for example. Whatever change you make, be sure you are bringing the challenge down a bit from your peak training approach.
Run with Friends
A taper also provides a great opportunity to meet existing or new friends for group runs, as you have less need to be concerned about meeting a specific pace or even distance target and can have more flexibility. This would be especially true of meeting up with people who are running in the same event and are also in their taper.
Take a Trip
While a bit more exotic and maybe out of reach in many cases, taking a business or personal trip can certainly provide a spark to your taper. To the extent you can control the timing of such trips, putting it during the taper takes a little pressure off the need to find the “perfect” route to fit your training schedule. If you do plan a trip, I have written a post previously on planning to run while traveling. I was fortunate enough during a recent taper to be able to enjoy exploring San Diego during the next to last week before the marathon.
There is no need for your taper to be dull or monotonous. Just some simple experiments such as these can make it one of the more enjoyable periods of your training cycle, while providing ideas to enhance your performance in the long term. Feel free to share your ways of making your taper more tolerable, or even enjoyable, in the comments.
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