How to taper for a Marathon

The past weeks training continued the ramp up back to normal training. The key for me during this period is being consistent building back up to normal mileage increasing both volume and intensity progressively and not just adding everything at once. The 1st session of significance I’ve done since the middle of August was a 3 mile tempo session averaging 5.30 which is a long way away from 5 mile tempos averaging 5.15 just over 2 months ago but its definitely a step in the right direction. I’ll increase this tempo progressively over the next few weeks as my fitness improves.

I wanted to use the blog this week to discuss how to taper for a marathon. With many completing the Dublin Virtual Marathon in just under 2 weeks, I have been asked constantly how to approach the final 2 weeks of training. Let me start off by saying getting a marathon taper right is not always easy and that everyone’s approach can be slightly different as each runner is different and what might work for one runner might not work for another. You might ask, why do you need to taper for a marathon, and for how long should this taper be? Tapering for a marathon allows you to absorb the previous weeks and months of training and allow you to arrive at marathon day fresh and in peak condition. Marathon tapers tend to be 2- 3 weeks depending on the runner with a gradual decline in mileage and for me a slight decrease in intensity. For my 1st marathon in 2017 I had a 3 week taper but felt it was too long for me and the build up to the race just felt longer and protracted and in fact made me more nervous earlier than I needed to be. For the 2019 Dublin Marathon where I ran an 8 min PB of 2.29. I planned a 2-week taper which I’ve copied below:

As you can see, I really just had 1 hard session in the final 2 weeks which was split 800s on the Wednesday 11 days out from the marathon. This was done at faster than marathon pace but everything else was just easy running with a few runs at marathon pace but generally the voulume and intensity was much lower than previous weeks. Some marathon runners in their final 2 weeks will do more than this and some will do a lot less. A question I got asked before was would it be much better to rest up for the final 2 weeks and do very little running especially on week of the race? It really is up to the runners discretion, my two cents would be that if you are used to running close to every day for the previous few months and you suddenly stop you loose the endorphin rush you are used to getting. I know for me I have so many things swirling around during race week that getting out for a run helps to calm me down and I know I come back from the run feeling much better and less stressed.

As many experienced marathon runners reading this will know with the taper comes a bit of paranoia where a lot of doubts come into play. For instance the week leading into Dublin last year I had convinced myself I had in no particular order: A throat infection, strained quad muscle, hamstring strain and achilles tendon flare up. Of course I had none of these but be aware that its totally normal leading up to the marathon that your mind will play tricks with you. A bit of advice I received was to “control the controllables” so just take a deep breath and relax you will be fine! I find it no harm to do some mediation exercises just to relax and get you thinking with a bit more clarity! However if you have any minor niggles or injuries this is the week to address them rather than a day or 2 before the race so book that physio appointment and ensure you are in perfect working order. Early next week you should start putting together your marathon plan, this doesn’t need to be anything too complicated but just finalising your average mile pace and where you want to be at certain points i.e. 10k, halfway and 30k. Go with you head over your heart when deciding this, most of us tend to overreach when deciding what our marathon goal should be. Make sure your goal is realistic and something that you’ve been tracking towards the previous few months. I also tend to include some positive mantras in my race plan so I can refer back to during the marathon when things get tough.

Hope this is helpful to those getting ready to run. If you have any questions or want to run anything by me like goal pace, fuelling race plans etc drop me an email on noelcarrollrunning@gmail.com or drop me a message on WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram!

Thanks for reading, have a great week folks 😊

Noel