Thursday, June 09, 2005

TERRIBLE TAPERS

You often hear about how hard it is to predict the weather in Boston. Well, Duluth’s weather is just as screwy. For example, yesterday the high temperature in the Twin Cities was 85, while the high in Duluth (which is about 150 miles north) was 47.

I was thinking back to my previous marathons and I couldn’t remember having a great taper during any of them (especially the last 3). The chart below (sorry about the formatting, I having figured out how to insert an excel chart) shows my weekly mileage for each of the 3 weeks leading up to race day, along with my weekly average and the number of days off during those 3 weeks.

Spg ‘01 Fall ‘01 Spg ‘02 Fall ‘02 Spg ‘04
3 weeks 56 49 52 54 38
2 weeks 29 42 44 36 40
1 week 29 26 12 22 15
Average 38 39 36 37 31
Days off 6 5 6 8 7

The good news is that 3 of those 5 races resulted in PRs (Spg ’01, Fall ’01 and Fall ’02). Note: I ran 3 marathons in ’96 and ’97. The entire training cycle for those 3 races was screwed up, not just the taper.

I jumped on the treadmill for 3 miles (24 minutes) last night and felt good. I decided to take today off, even though I’m feeling good.

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