The Next Three Weeks...

Hi!

I have had an account on this forum for a long time, but I haven't posted or logged in in a long time! So hi everyone!

Basically here is my situation. Back in January, I signed up for the Minneapolis Marathon, which is on June 3rd this year. As I am still a student, I got really busy with school and work this semester and didn't really train throughout the semester except for sporadic five mile runs. However, about two weeks ago, I decided to sign up for Grandma's marathon, which is two weeks after Minneapolis, on June 16th. I was almost done with school and I knew I still had (some) time to train. So basically my runner-addict side took over any reason for not doing these marathons...

School ended last week, so I really only have had two weeks of good training, last week and this week. I have done 5-8 mile runs during the week, and I did a 14 mile run last week-end, and yesterday (Saturday) I did a 20-mile run, because the organization that puts on the Minneapolis Marathon had a 20-mile organized and supported training run. The weird thing is, on the last mile of that 20-miler, I felt better than I've ever felt on the last mile of a 20-mile training run. And now I have three weeks until the Minnneapolis Marathon.

So my question is...should I taper these last three weeks, or should I put in one more quality week, because I really have only had two weeks of quality training? I was thinking maybe taper a little bit, but still have a 16-18 mile long run. Let me know your thoughts!

And...no matter what anyone says, I'm still going for both the marathons...I'm too addicted not too! I had though about changing my registration for the Minneapolis Marathon and doing the half for that race and then the full at Grandma's. But after the 20-miler yesterday...I'm going for both!

Thanks in advance!
Caleb

Well, since we can't get sued for giving an opinion, yes, train one more week. I'd buy yourself a new pair of whatever running shoes you have (presuming you're running in running shoes) for the one more week of training and hope they don't give you blisters.

Don't get all wound up on race day, just plan on finishing it. But based on how hyper you appear to be typing your post, that might take some effort. If you don't throttle back at the start, you'll blow up at the end.

Should be an interesting race report. Good luck.

ounce wrote:Should be an interesting race report. Good luck.

+1

Jeff F wrote:

ounce wrote:Should be an interesting race report. Good luck.

+1

Nah, he is young - and his training sounds a lot like mine when I was still a college student.

Well if I'm reading it right it sounds like your training has been so so and your legs sound to be pretty much recovered. The idea of Taper is to allow the body to recovery and to also allow the body to peak for race day. That is why normally I would call taper peak week.

Personally for myself I never do a 3 week Peak or taper I feel that it's just two long for myself, so my standard peak week is 2 weeks. I find that is plenty of time to allow myself to recharge and get sharp for race day.

So in your case i would differently go one more week and make taper 2 weeks, heck I would go as far to say that you could go 1 1/2 longer but still at this point the question is how much do you really gain for the Minneapolis Marathon. Now since you are also doing Grandma's you could train through Minneapolis. I have done this is in the past for marathons.

Basically you could train hard for 2 more weeks do a one week taper for Minneapolis decide on how many miles you want to run hard and run the rest at recovery to easy pace. Another words you can turn Minneapolis into a a long fartlek run and use this for quality training for Grandma's. Just a thought.

Thanks everyone! Yes, the races definitely will be interesting!

I think that I won't taper this week, and I'll do a 16-18 mile long run, and then taper for two-ish weeks.

Thanks again!

Good luck!

Caleb wrote:Hi!

I was thinking maybe taper a little bit, but still have a 16-18 mile long run. Let me know your thoughts!

I like this idea - cut back on the total weekly volume, but log a decent long run this weekend. As Schuey said, you don't have as much to recover from so don't need to taper as much.

I'll see how it goes!