After a fantastic four days in Vegas, today was my first run since last Thursday afternoon, and it turned out to be more of a struggle than I’d expected. Leading up to the weekend, I felt in fine form and definitely ready to take on another marathon in a couple of weeks time. With three runs of 20 miles and above since my last marathon in the middle of March, I was convinced it was time to taper and start the countdown to Frederick on May 4th.
Despite the lack of running on my Vegas trip, I wasn’t totally lazy and probably covered more miles walking up and down the strip than most people cover in a month. Therefore, I was a little surprised yesterday to feel quite sluggish on my almost 5 mile afternoon run, and put the feeling down to a late night flight, slight dehydration and the constant battle against against the ENE wind. I guess looking back at the GPS stats I didn’t do too badly after all – averaging 6:49 per mile with each mile progressively faster than the previous one.
So, with only 11 days to go until the Frederick Marathon, I’m now facing a bit of a dilemma. Do I continue to taper and risk feeling more and more sluggish as time goes on, or attempt to squeeze in more high quality workouts with the aim of improving my level of fitness. It’s probably too late to do another quality long run (not enough time to recover), but I will be running a final 10k race on Saturday which will hopefully be a good gauge of where I’m at.
Hope everyone’s doing good with their training and moving closer to whatever goals you’re working towards….
A 5k a week before a marathon usually won’t hurt, nor will doing a few short repeats at marathon pace 5 or 6 days before hand. (Doing both might, though…) As long as you don’t treat the 10k as an “A” level race, then you’ll probably be fine. I wouldn’t try to run much faster than marathon pace though.
This isn’t going to do much for you fitness wise, but it will help clear up your legs and stretch them out and keep them ready. I usually put something quick in the last couple weeks of my training to get me moving during the taper, but I try not to go much faster than marathon pace and I don’t do a ton of volume. Full and fast recovery is key.
Ah, sound advice from the recently certified RRCA Running Coach! Thanks Blaine!
Welcome back Steve!
Rest always does my body good. The first one for me is always sluggish. You will be back to your old self and better in no time!
Charlie
lol, at the post title, what more can I say after the mighty Blaine has spoken!
Hi Steve
I know that sluggish feeling and I seem to get it during every taper. The legs are OK race day, but I do feel that I suffer a little bit psychologically.
I like what Blaine said and find that a faster pace with a little quicker leg turnover does seem to help, but it is hard not to train like usual.
Best of luck with your upcoming race and thanks for being so supportive on my blog. You are still the guy I want to be able to run like and maybe I will be lucky enough to catch you… someday.
Abi – not so sure I’m mighty, but I have run a few miles.
As for the sluggishness right before a race, that’s probably from the carboloading. All that extra fuel allows you to absorb even more water weight, so you might be a little bloated and sluggish. This is a good thing, though, because it means you have a better chance of a successful fueling strategy during the marathon.
Had to laugh when I saw the title of this post – Totally hilarious! 😉 Well, hope you had a good time in Vegas. Knowing you, you’ll get your fitness back……
-C