Much has been written about tapering before a big race (like running, cycling, triathlon). The prevailing wisdom has you reduce your mileage in the week (or two) before the race. The body is given the opportunity to stabilize, recover and get charged up for the race. And as logical as it sounds it might just not be the only way to get ready for a race. Could it be that you can keep your training “lifestyle” going all the way up to the race and then after the race? Could it be that no tapering is ok as long as you have a big enough base of miles / hours in your body such that you can handle the lead-up to the race and the race itself? Given the two goals (for 2014) of a marathon a month and the 4,000 miles of running it does not give much of a chance to take a break, not much of an opportunity to taper, and so I press on with a regular training week of 85 miles, and then some riding on the bike in the “big ring’ – the thinking is that it is how you get ready to run your 9th marathon in nine months (tomorrow morning).

I will find out for sure on a very hilly course, which will keep me from a PR and it will also be a good test of how I am holding up after nine months of big miles and lots of races. Stay tuned as I am confident tomorrow’s post will be a summary of how the race went. And maybe we will just find out a little more about what is possible and how this non-tapering is working.

http://www.thehighperformancelife.net/

Loving life when tapering is not required

Ciao

Joey g