A great quote from a local coach, "It takes guts to taper." Stick to it.

Anne

I finally found the results of the race, they posted a "time" (31:21) and then a "net time" (31:04)? I presume the first is the time from the starting gun to the finish and the net is the time it took from starting line to finish line, but why bother posting the first one at all? Just kind of confusing I guess.

Quite a slow bunch, the average time for all 438 participants was 31:31. I finished 212 out of 438 and 117 out of 296 females, never thought I'd see myself finishing in the top half of any race

What does it say about me that I am quite enjoying taper and have no urge to go farther? But I do feel quite lazy this week.

So I got my 5K results and I did indeed win 35-40 AG! I was 8th female out of 114 finishers (I got beat by a 12 year old!) and 39th overall out of 214 finishers.

Well done! I haven't found any official results for my race from Saturday but I checked at the end and was definitely 4th, I'm not sure about how it works out age group wise or how many I was 4th out of.

I did about 17 miles round London on Sunday. I'm getting better at doing my long runs when I'm travelling, although because I only really know the touristy bits of London that meant running through them and struggling a bit with dodging tourists. I was also suffering a bit from the race on saturday so didn't quite do the 20 I'd planned.

I've got a half this weekend, so that will be a nice rest! I'm due to start tapering after Sunday, but might try to fit one long run in after that because the half won't be anywhere near full effort. I'll see how I feel though, I know a lot of people who have tried two week tapers and say they work, but I'm a bit nervous because I've always gone into a marathon off three.

How do you do your taper?

I am doing a 3 week taper, but the first week still was pretty dang high mileage. I did 80% of max week, then this week is 50% then, next week is just enough to be fresh for the race

2.5 miles this morning. Ran the whole way and it felt great. It was 60F so it was a nice morning and I got back home just as the sun rose.

Anne

Ennay - my taper tends to go 75%, 50%, 25% + marathon. Based on an average mileage of 40 mpw, that's 30, 20, 10 + 26.2. It worked for me last time, but I'll see how I feel after the weekend and whether I want to fit another long one in before Amsterdam.

10.3 this evening. I hadn't run since Sunday so I felt pretty fresh. The only problem was it was SOOO cold. I'm really not looking forward to winter.

I'm running into work tomorrow, then that's probably it until Sunday. I'd prefer not to do my only two runs of the week so close together, but that's the way it worked best logistically and at the moment I have to go with what's easiest to fit in.

I decided to follow a 75/50/25 taper on the advice of a few friends, so that's what I've been doing. And then, lo and behold, I visit the Runners World website today and read an article about how tapering this much can actually hurt your race day performance! Whatever - I decided that for a first marathon, it's not likely to make much difference. The real problem with tapering is all the extra time I have on my hands to read silly articles!

Ran 4 miles tonight, and broke the 9 minute mile mark for the first time - so the extra rest must be doing something good for me.

I did another 8.9 this morning. The direct route to work is about 5 miles, but my legs felt pretty good so I decided to go a slightly longer way round. I seem to be picking a bit of confidence back up, my running hasn't been bad bad recently, but because it's been disrupted by other events I feel like I take a few too many days off, struggle to get back into it, then do back to back runs and tire myself out, then the cycle goes round again.

The problem with all the different theories about tapering is working out what works for you, which might be different to other people. You don't get too many goes at it with them being the sort of races that you don't do too many of, for Edinburgh I did the 75/50/25 thing and felt really good on the day, but was that because my training was good or because my taper was good? Would I have felt even better if I'd tapered differently? I just don't know. And even if I taper differently this time, will any difference be because of the change to the taper or the changes to my training? I think a lot of it has to be gut instinct. Hopefully you know how well you recover, how much rest you need. If your legs are itching to run then sometime's it's better to go out and do it, but to keep it a bit more relaxed than trying to hit time and distance targets.

I'm waffling.

I'm struggling with taper..

I feel like I should be getting more energy at some point and I am not. I struggled to make my 5 miles yesterday. I have no desire to run at all. All I want to do is curl up in bed, but I am not sleeping. (so much for overtraining causing my insomnia)

I'm also eating myself out of house and home. I think taper has kicked off a cycle of depression.

I do wonder about over tapering for me. Just because my PR's keep happening on races I run tired and not on races I taper for. All of my races that I did well on this year I had no taper. My fastest 5K prior to this past weekend was at the end of my triathlon. I just seem to stagnate quickly.

gloom and doom...blah

Rachel - The so-far-away-we-pulled-this-out-of-our-butt forecast for portland marathon..sunny, high of 65 low of 52.

Hoping the sunny part changes to partly sunny or overcast.

I haven't posted because I'm struggling, folks. Did 3 miles today but it was HARD... I feel like I've lost a lot of ground with that injury; I only ran Sunday and now Friday this week I need to do a little better than this... maybe I'm losing motivation, or maybe my focus is elsewhere, but I'm working on getting back into my 'groove'! My cardio ability seems to have dropped... maybe I'll look at upping my protein as well.

I have nothing to add on tapering - I haven't reached that point yet!

Heather

Heather, you'll get back on track soon, don't worry!

I ran our cross country course with the kids tonight. We timed it, and I did 31:57, which wasn't great but I was feeling REALLY tired so I expected it to be worse.

We have an invitational race tomorrow so I'll be watching kids run all day. We have two middle schoolers running at 9:00am and then we have to hang out there until our high schoolers run at 2:00pm. Jeez. I guess I'd better take papers to grade!! Should be fun, though -- I'm hoping the kids will get some kind of medals or a little trophy or something!

Heather, we all have bad spots now and then. Make sure you take enough time to recover properly, start slowly and you'll be back in no time.

2 miles for me this morning on a trail run. Just under 30 minutes. Did some run/walking since it was tougher than the roads I'm used to.

Anne

Heather - hang in there... everyone has hard days. There are days I cant run 2 miles.