THE FINAL COUNTDOWN & TAPERING

Not long to go now until the Baxters Loch Ness marathon so the bulk of your hard training will have been done and it’s time to think about ensuring you reap the rewards by being in the best possible condition on the big day. Fraser Clyne explores some of the ideas around tapering ahead of the marathon.

Many of you will have trained for months to knock yourselves into shape to run your best race in October, so it’s vital not to undo all the good work by getting the final preparations wrong. Tapering, or reducing your training workload, is an important part of these final preparations, but it is something many of us struggle to get right.

The need to taper is perhaps now more widely understood and adhered to, but that doesn’t mean to say we have a clear gasp on how best to do it. So, why taper at all? Tapering is designed to leave you well-rested and feeling sharp, both mentally and physically; it should be done over a long enough period to allow sufficient time for the repair of any muscle damage caused by hard training in the previous weeks; it should allow your glycogen stores to be replenished; it should also lead to improved immune system performance; and psychologically it should leave you feeling more positive and ready for the big push on race day. The science isn’t exact, but research suggests a proper taper can result in a 2-6% performance benefit, which equates to anything between 3.5 and 11mins for a 3 hour marathoner.

The problem is that these research studies don’t indicate exactly how much of a taper is most effective. In some of the studies, to achieve these performance benefits, runners reduced their training by anything from 30 to 75 per cent in the countdown towards a race, and over different lengths of time (from one week to three weeks). Admittedly, it can be difficult to get the balance right. Training too much or too hard can leave you exhausted and unable to perform well. Doing too little may also leave you feeling lethargic and heavy-legged and in a negative frame of mind. You need to find a balance.

The consensus is that it’s best to gradually reduce your mileage over the final two or three weeks before the marathon, but retain an element of quality running during that period. You won’t lose fitness over this period so long as you continue to do some appropriate running and keep your system tuned up with some relatively short, sharp sessions.

My own experience leads me to believe that the amount and type of tapering needed to optimise performance in the marathon depends largely on how your overall long- term training plan has been constructed. I favour an approach which might be described as a multi-dip taper. This is where a number of taper weeks are built into different stages of, say, a 12 week training plan. There might be a mini-taper every fourth, third or even second week, allowing you to train hard, then rest and recover on a cyclical basis. This approach may allow for a slightly reduced final taper. Each runner is, of course, different and much depends on how long you have been training and what quantity and quality of training you have been doing.

Whatever approach is taken, there’s no need, and probably no benefit, from doing any exceptionally long runs over the final 20 days, and in the final week all your runs should be extremely comfortable. You want to feel as though you are straining at the leash, mentally excited and ready to run fast. Maybe on the Wednesday before the marathon, try a short run which includes, perhaps 10 x 100 metres fast, but not flat out. You should be flowing along with a nice relaxed style of movement. Take a slow jog-back recovery between each 100m. This is just to keep the engine tuned-up and to feel the exhilaration of running fast without too much effort. You might even do a few of these 100m strides the day before the race as well. Remember, you cannot get any fitter over the final week, but you can get fresher and feel better.

Fraser Clyne is a former international marathon runner with a best time of 2 hours 11 minutes 50 seconds. Five times Scottish marathon champion, he competed in the 1986 Commonwealth Games marathon, finishing 10th.He has competed all over the world in 3K, 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon races. He has run 22 sub-2 hour 20 minute marathons and is a sports journalist