Lazy Days

Picture by Kátia :)

For me, the time has come to put my feet up, kick back and eat.  Welcome to the wonderful world of tapering!

It is now less than a week before my race, so training that was in full flow a week or two ago has reduced to just a trickle.  It can feel a little frustrating, and sometimes slightly counter intuitive, however in terms of performance, this time is invaluable.

This is the time pre-event when your main focus is on recovery.  Your muscles repair, carb stores in your muscles get fully loaded, and any niggle is given time to fully heal.  The aim is to be at your best come race day.

There will be the little voice inside your head telling you to get out and do one more run.  That one more training session will make all the difference, or that all of your hard work will wither away if you stop moving.  Don’t listen to the voices!  Start to look on this lazing around as part of your training – which it is!

The good work that you have put in over the past months won’t disappear over a week or two.  The extra blood capillaries won’t suddenly close up, your muscles won’t waste away over night and you aren’t going to balloon in weight if you eat sensibly.

Every time you train you are damaging muscles, causing micro-tears in the muscles fibres.  Your body responds by making the muscle bigger to withstand higher demands in future.  During your training you use rest day to make sure the damage doesn’t get too much and become an injury, but that’s all.  During a taper the focus is on recovering as completely as possible.

This is the time that all of your training comes together.  Recovery will help you far more than one extra session could possibly do.

Personally, I take 2 weeks to taper.  The first week is a gradual decrease, keeping up some of the short sessions, but not training too long or too intensely.  The second week is some active recovery (gentle jogging), but the 3 days before a race will be complete rest with as little activity as possible.

During this time I will live in compression tights, eating lots of wholesome food.  Stay away from junk food, take aways and sugary snacks.  I base my diet at this time around fruit and veg, pasta and potatoes and unprocessed meat, fish and pulses. 

Massages, long soaks in a hot bath, all variety of decadence can be enjoyed at this time.  Don’t worry though – you will be back out training again before you know it.