Week 1 starts with 2 recovery days to recover from the long run on Sunday. The second day includes eight repetitions of 100-meter strideouts to improve your leg turnover. Wednesday’s workout is a 12-miler (19 km) to provide a mild endurance stimulus. Thursday and Friday are recovery days, leaving you well rested for Saturday, when you run your last tune-up race before the marathon. The 8K to 10K tune-up race provides a boost to your fitness that will make marathon pace feel relatively easy, yet it is short enough that recovery will occur quickly. Sunday is a 17-miler (27 km) to again provide a moderate endurance stimulus to help maintain the adaptations, such as increased glycogen storage and blood volume, from your previous long runs.
Week 2 starts with 3 recovery days, with Tuesday including a few strideouts to enhance your leg turnover. Thursday calls for your last workout at close to
O2max pace. This is done 10 days before the marathon to allow time for recovery and supercompensation. Friday and Saturday are recovery days, with Saturday again including a few strideouts to enhance your leg turnover. The week ends with a 13-miler (21 km) on Sunday, once again providing the body with a reminder to maintain the adaptations built up over many weeks of long runs.
Marathon week is all easy recovery with the exception of Wednesday. Wednesday is a dress rehearsal for the marathon. Wear the shoes, socks, shorts, and so on that you’ll wear in the marathon. This is your last chance to check that everything is right for the race. After an easy 3 miles (5 km), run 2 miles (3 km) at marathon race pace, then 2 more miles easy. You should feel reasonably fresh but will probably not yet feel fully rested. If you have any tight muscles, there’s still time to get a massage, stretch, or see a physical therapist to get your legs ready for race day.
By tapering in this way, you’ll reach the marathon start line as prepared as possible. Then all that remains is the little matter of covering 26.2 miles (42.2 km) as fast as you can. What pacing and nutrition strategies to use during the marathon to run your best is the focus of the next chapter.
In chapter 2, we discuss the importance of carbohydrate loading for the marathon. It’s vitally important that your muscles and liver be optimally stocked with glycogen when you reach the start of the race. Of similar importance is arriving at the starting line fully hydrated. See chapter 2 for in-depth information on these topics.
Tapering Your Other Training
When you start cutting back your mileage, it can be tempting to increase whatever nonrunning training you do. For the most part, try to resist that urge. The various forms of supplementary training we looked at in the preceding chapter have the same general purpose as your running training – to get you to the marathon start line in optimum fitness for racing 26.2 miles (42.2 km). Approach your core, resistance, flexibility, and cross-training as you do your running when the marathon nears. That is, realize that the main work is done, and your goal now shifts to maintaining the gains you made while allowing your body to rest up for race day.
Keep your core and resistance workouts to a minimum in the last 10 days before your marathon, and eliminate them in the last few days. If you’re used to cross-training, it’s okay to continue gentle versions of your normal activities until a few days before the race. Flexibility training is fine to do right up to race day, but don’t go overboard. If you’re used to a few 10-minute stretching sessions per week, don’t suddenly devote half an hour a day to it in the week before your marathon.
The same goes for form drills. If you’re used to doing them, then it’s fine to do a short sequence in the week before the marathon. As with flexibility training, the drills will help you feel looser during your taper, which, if nothing else, can provide peace of mind while you’re reducing your running. Again, though, don’t suddenly add new exercises or increase the amount of drills you do during your taper. The hay is already in the proverbial barn.
Preserving Energy (and Sanity) Before the Marathon
If at all possible, during the last week before the marathon, reduce not just your training but also the amount of stress in your life. Assuming the cooperation of your family, friends, and coworkers, try to do the following:
• Avoid having major deadlines at work or other energy-draining undertakings.
• Wash your hands frequently to lower your risk of catching a cold.
• Get plenty of sleep early in the week.
• Let others do the driving.
• Minimize the amount of time you spend at the prerace expo.
• Save sightseeing for after the marathon.
• Spend a few minutes each day in a quiet spot visualizing a successful race.
As race day approaches, it’s normal to feel anxious. The marathon can seem more like a concept than a reality when it’s 10 weeks away, but when it’s just a matter of days to go, it can become all too real a presence in your thoughts. That’s especially true when you’re tapering your training and might be a little more on edge as a result. (And because, if you’re like most marathoners, you’re worried that all the months of training are quickly evaporating after just a few rest days.)
To keep your mind at ease, practice visualization during your taper. In some of the time that you would usually allot to running, sit or lie in a quiet spot and mentally run through your race. Anticipate potential problems – a twinge in your calf, sudden rain, and so on – and see yourself overcoming them. Also visualize yourself running relaxed in the early stages of the marathon and then running strongly over the final 10K. If you have a time goal for your marathon, repeatedly picture yourself crossing the finish, with the clock showing your goal time.
Chapter 6
Race-Day Strategy
Your overall preparation for the marathon occurs over several months. During that time, you meticulously plan and diligently train so that you’re in peak condition for the race. To do your best, however, you also need to have a plan for the marathon itself. That plan is the focus of this chapter. How much should you warm up for the marathon, and what should that warm-up consist of? How should you handle the first few miles, the first half of the race, the long stretch up to 20 miles (32 km), and the final 6 miles and 385 yards (10 km)? Let’s take a look at race-day strategies that help you get everything out of your months of preparation so that you cross the finish line exhausted but satisfied.
Warming Up
Warming up for any race is important. The purpose of a warm-up is to prepare your body to run at race pace. This involves increasing your metabolic rate, your body temperature, and the circulation of blood (and thus oxygen) to your muscles. The warm-up activates your aerobic system to work optimally from the start of the race.
There’s a downside, however, to warming up for the marathon. One of the challenges in the marathon is to reach the finish line before becoming glycogen depleted. In chapter 2, we emphasize the importance of carbohydrate loading before the marathon and taking in carbohydrate during the marathon to help ensure that you don’t run out of carbohydrate before the finish. But during a warm-up, you burn a mixture of carbohydrate and fat, thereby slightly reducing your glycogen stores. The key, then, is to find the minimum amount of warm-up necessary to prepare your body to handle race pace as soon as the starter ’s gun is fired so that you save as much of your precious carbohydrate reserves as possible for the 26.2 miles (42.2 km) ahead.