One of the early mistakes I made when I first started running in competitive races was neglecting the value of the “taper”.
Before running my first half marathon, I ran the longest run of my training cycle about 10 days prior to the event. While I finished just fine, a veteran runner quickly alerted me to the need to “taper” prior to running this type of event.
Tapering is taking time at the end of the training cycle to lessen the intensity of workouts in order to give your muscles the ability recover and achieve maximum performance on the anticipated race day event. There are varying theories on how long a tapering period should be, but the period of time generally increases with the distance of the event involved.
If you do your homework and consult training programs for a specific event authored by a recognized expert, you will generally find appropriate tapering built into the program.
Before running my first half marathon, I ran the longest run of my training cycle about 10 days prior to the event. While I finished just fine, a veteran runner quickly alerted me to the need to “taper” prior to running this type of event.
Tapering is taking time at the end of the training cycle to lessen the intensity of workouts in order to give your muscles the ability recover and achieve maximum performance on the anticipated race day event. There are varying theories on how long a tapering period should be, but the period of time generally increases with the distance of the event involved.
If you do your homework and consult training programs for a specific event authored by a recognized expert, you will generally find appropriate tapering built into the program.
This entry from Matt Fitzgerald’s blog Blog.FasterTomorrow.com definitively explains the value of tapering -- http://blog.fastertomorrow.com/blog/marathon-training/0/0/the-perfect-taper in your training activities.
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