A Short Taper

I'm following pretty much the same routine I did before pacing the Dublin marathon. It worked well then and will hopefully do so again. Since I have not done a lot of training in the weeks since Vienna there was no fatigue to taper from.

I did the coach's "taper workout" on Thursday which included a 4-mile evaluation run, just like the ones I used to do a dozen times when training for Vienna, and then 2x800 on the way back home. The evaluation run consists of 4 miles of flat road (I'm running back and forwards 4 times on the same half-mile stretch) at heart rate 161, comparing the mile splits and then measuring how long the HR takes to get back to 130 while standing still. My main problem was that the Garmin's sound has stopped working a couple of weeks ago (I dropped it onto the kitchen floor once too often) which means I could no longer use the automatic alarm to keep the HR in a very narrow band around 161. As a result I ran a little bit too hard on each mile, but the coach had a way to correct that, by adding 3.5 seconds to the pace for each beat too high. The raw figures were 7:09 (164), 7:10 (163), 7:09 (163) and 7:06 (164), which give me "corrected" figures of 7:19, 7:17, 7:16 and 7:16. The time to drop the HR to 130 was 34 seconds.

I'm now left scratching my head at these numbers. There was no slowing down at all over the 4 miles (in fact I was speeding up), which should mean my aerobic system is in great form, the recovery time was excellent as well but I was 20-30 seconds slower than during my peak shape. Luckily there is no need to guess how to proceed from here. I'm pacing the Cork marathon on Monday, will then spend a couple of weeks recovering from that and do another evaluation once I feel ready. Thursday's effort served to provide a base line that I can compare the next evaluation to.

Oh, and unsurprisingly I messed up the 800s. I should have run them in about 3:10 - 3:20 and the first one was ok in 3:16 but the second one was way too fast at 3:01. Oops.

Anyway, that was the last "serious" run, I did merely 5 miles both Friday and Saturday, running as slowly as I could without feeling awkward. This produced pretty much the expected pace on Friday but I did a double-take when looking at the figure this morning. It looks like one day into the taper I'm feeling great already.

It may have given me a few anxious weeks but now I am glad I got bumped up from the 3:30 to the 3:15 pace band for Cork. My knee has improved immeasurably over the last couple of weeks but starts hurting whenever I run slower, about 8:00 pace. I can't explain it either but it's the main reason why all runs over the last few weeks have been a bit faster than what I would have done under the coach's guidance. I will re-assess the whole situation after the marathon, which has always been the plan.

2 Jun

12 miles, 1:26:57, 7:14 pace, HR 158
   incl. 4 miles evaluation plus 2x800

3 Jun

5 miles, 39:21, 7:52 pace, HR 145

4 Jun

5 miles, 37:56, 7:35 pace, HR 146