I feel like I should make myself tired before regular season meets. That way, when the important meets roll around, I'll actually taper and have the race of my life.
Opinions?
I feel like I should make myself tired before regular season meets. That way, when the important meets roll around, I'll actually taper and have the race of my life.
Opinions?
Runner 1: Good race.
Runner 2: Yea, thanks. I would have beat you if I didn't run 15 miles yesterday though.
Just an excuse..
First, that's not what tapering is.
Secondly, why not just put in the 15 miler the day after the race and get the advantages of the training without actually making yourself tired for the race.
The 2nd best time I ran in the mile and best I've ever felt in the mile (read: more in the tank) was after I ran 1 race and about 9 1/2 other miles the day before. The day after that race I felt pretty good too running 12 - 13 miles.
Depends on the individual and how they do their long runs, but my normal long runs usually don't take anything out of me in terms of how I feel the next day.
I'm just a "hobby runner", but I remember one time in the '90s I ran a road 10K in a pathetic 35 minutes, and was pissed at how slow I was. Over the next six days, I hammered out about 100 miles, including 18 hard, hilly miles the day before the next race. One week after the bad race, I ran a 32 minute road 10K. I know I didn't really improve my conditioning by 3 minutes in the week of training - I was probably just on a bad day (sick?) or needed to bust out some rust - but the 18 hard miles the day before the faster race didn't hurt things. I'm someone who always feels worse when trying taper though.
Coopington wrote:
First, that's not what tapering is.
Secondly, why not just put in the 15 miler the day after the race and get the advantages of the training without actually making yourself tired for the race.
The 15 miles wouldn't really be a long run. It would be a double of something like 8/7. The day before my last race I ran a 10 miler. I'm just trying to keep the mileage up around 70.
Thanks to all those who replied.
I think you're better off just running later after the race. we had a kid get 17 miles in at a track meet one day. granted he ran the 10k, but that's a lot of w/up and c/d for the rest of the day