When you train for your first marathon you have to find yourself a plan. Your plan will help you through the weeks, building your miles and your fitness as it goes. About three weeks out from the big day you will have run your last big 20 miler and the distances you run will reduce as time counts down. Having joined various running forums to pick up tips from those in the know you will see that around this time people begin to talk of tapers. Once you realise that they're not talking about endangered South American mammals as some kind of new runners super food you stop trawling the internet for a butcher who stocks it and sit down for a bit.
In fact you sit down for quite a lot during the taper. The science behind the whole thing is that you've conditioned your body for the task ahead, that you need to give your body a chance to recover and for your stores of muscle glycogen, enzymes, antioxidants and hormones depleted during your training to recover to optimal levels (yes, of course I got that from wikipedia). As well as reducing the mileage on the road, your diet is supposed to change to to include less protein and more carbohydrate. Hence I had extra chicken fried rice last night, but went easy on the chicken.
The other thing you are supposed to do is worry. OK. maybe you're not supposed to do that but it's hard not to. Every sneeze is flu, every twinge is a pulled muscle and any work colleagues within 96 hours of a declared illness are directed to hold their half of your meetings from the doorway of your office lest they infect you with something deadly (and yes, I really did insist she stayed just outside the office door). I'm downing vitamin C like there's no tomorrow and every food stuff that can have chia seeds added to it, gets it. I'm worrying about getting the right kind of pasta at the hotel the night before (do you think they'd cook up my packet of Tesco's finest if I offered them corkage?) and am most definitely sneaking some peanut butter down for breakfast on Sunday. Will it be cold enough to warrant a long sleeved layer next week or will I overheat and collapse in a heap at the 20 mile marker.....worry, worry, worry.
Amongst all of the worry I did at least manage a long run this week, but it was capped at 10 miles as part of the taper. For the first time in a while the weather was almost pleasant (everything is relative) so I headed for the coastal route around the eastern and southern side of Portsmouth. Under instruction from the plan to make it an easy run I plodded along and enjoyed the view as the sun glinted off of the water and the first yachts of the spring enjoyed themselves out in The Solent. As always I got to ponder, and I pondered just how weird it was to think of a ten mile run as an "easy" one. It's not so long ago that running that far at all was my holy grail. I can remember the first time I completed 5k and how (rightly) proud I was. I can remember lining up for that first 10 miler in the Great South Run having never been that far and totally in fear of what might happen. I can remember running into the stadium finish at Reading in my first half marathon, totally spent and with a realisation that I could never run a step further than that distance. Yet here I am, two years on and ready to run the 26.2.
By this time next week it will all be over one way or another. One of you will be the proud new owner of an iPad mini (if it's the person who guessed 13 hours and 33 minutes you can collect it from the reception desk at A&E) and I'll be sitting down again, not as part of my training and most definitely for a long while...
In fact you sit down for quite a lot during the taper. The science behind the whole thing is that you've conditioned your body for the task ahead, that you need to give your body a chance to recover and for your stores of muscle glycogen, enzymes, antioxidants and hormones depleted during your training to recover to optimal levels (yes, of course I got that from wikipedia). As well as reducing the mileage on the road, your diet is supposed to change to to include less protein and more carbohydrate. Hence I had extra chicken fried rice last night, but went easy on the chicken.
The other thing you are supposed to do is worry. OK. maybe you're not supposed to do that but it's hard not to. Every sneeze is flu, every twinge is a pulled muscle and any work colleagues within 96 hours of a declared illness are directed to hold their half of your meetings from the doorway of your office lest they infect you with something deadly (and yes, I really did insist she stayed just outside the office door). I'm downing vitamin C like there's no tomorrow and every food stuff that can have chia seeds added to it, gets it. I'm worrying about getting the right kind of pasta at the hotel the night before (do you think they'd cook up my packet of Tesco's finest if I offered them corkage?) and am most definitely sneaking some peanut butter down for breakfast on Sunday. Will it be cold enough to warrant a long sleeved layer next week or will I overheat and collapse in a heap at the 20 mile marker.....worry, worry, worry.
Amongst all of the worry I did at least manage a long run this week, but it was capped at 10 miles as part of the taper. For the first time in a while the weather was almost pleasant (everything is relative) so I headed for the coastal route around the eastern and southern side of Portsmouth. Under instruction from the plan to make it an easy run I plodded along and enjoyed the view as the sun glinted off of the water and the first yachts of the spring enjoyed themselves out in The Solent. As always I got to ponder, and I pondered just how weird it was to think of a ten mile run as an "easy" one. It's not so long ago that running that far at all was my holy grail. I can remember the first time I completed 5k and how (rightly) proud I was. I can remember lining up for that first 10 miler in the Great South Run having never been that far and totally in fear of what might happen. I can remember running into the stadium finish at Reading in my first half marathon, totally spent and with a realisation that I could never run a step further than that distance. Yet here I am, two years on and ready to run the 26.2.
By this time next week it will all be over one way or another. One of you will be the proud new owner of an iPad mini (if it's the person who guessed 13 hours and 33 minutes you can collect it from the reception desk at A&E) and I'll be sitting down again, not as part of my training and most definitely for a long while...
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