The taper

I have never had a very clear approach to tapering and generally reduce my mileage significantly in each of the three taper weeks on an ad hoc basis. The first taper week still registered fifty miles and I retained both tempo and marathon paced run.

12 April: nine miles with 2x2 at tempo pace of 06:12 minute/miles. Average HR for the tempo miles was 162.

15 April: ten miles with six at PMP with average mile splits of 06:31 with an average HR of 162.

The second week reduced to thirty miles and by the end of this week I felt significantly more energised. Notwithstanding the reduced mileage I aimed to maintain a similar proportion of intensity and quality sessions to that of a full week. Consequently, the following sessions took place

19 April: seven miles with three tempo miles at an average pace of 06:25 and average HR of 166.

21 April: Nine miles with five MP (marathon pace) miles at 06:41 and average HR of 161.

This was the last significant marathon paced session of this training cycle and I decided it would be good to reduce the pace a little to see what it felt like and I was a little disappointed; perhaps it was the early morning nature of the run or 'taper madness' but it felt a little more uncomfortable than I would have liked; maybe this was my 'crap' taper run. I don't have an answer for this, I think it is primarily a psychological thing, but almost everyone has a bad taper run, where they doubt their own training and ability to run race pace for 26.2. It is at this point that I am hoping the experience of running six previous marathons and experiencing similar doubts will allow me to largely dismiss them.

In other news the fastest run marathon ever took place in Boston, but does not qualify as a world record!

Watch more video of 2011 Boston Marathon on flotrack.org