Complete rest for week before marathon?
dutchk
Posts: 121 Member
Posing a question for those more experienced than I. What are your thoughts on taking the week off before a marathon race to fully rest? My current situation. I'm not an experienced runner, though I ran a sub 4 hour marathon back in 1988. I got back into running a little over 18 months ago and have run several races, including a couple of halfs. Not a high mileage guy, only about 25-30 mi a week while training.
I'm battling off and on knee pain now. I'm fairly certain it is mostly attributed to my heel striker running style and it manifests itself on long or fast runs. I can mitigate it for the most part by concentrating on a more mid foot strike and have been successful in doing so on the 5-8 milers. But I pretty much just started that transition and it brings along its own pains during the learning process, chiefly calf soreness and some achilles tenderness. As I tire on my endurance runs, I tend to revert back to my old ways. I have one more long run (24 mi) before my taper, leading into the Philly Marathon in November. On one occasion during my training (before experimenting with the mid foot strike) I had a particularly bad instance of knee pain and took a week off from running. I had a very good running week following that. My goal is to successfully complete this thon and have fun doing so. It will be my 25th anniversary of running my one and only other marathon. Should I have a couple of easy short runs or simply take the week off? Thoughts?? Thanks!
I'm battling off and on knee pain now. I'm fairly certain it is mostly attributed to my heel striker running style and it manifests itself on long or fast runs. I can mitigate it for the most part by concentrating on a more mid foot strike and have been successful in doing so on the 5-8 milers. But I pretty much just started that transition and it brings along its own pains during the learning process, chiefly calf soreness and some achilles tenderness. As I tire on my endurance runs, I tend to revert back to my old ways. I have one more long run (24 mi) before my taper, leading into the Philly Marathon in November. On one occasion during my training (before experimenting with the mid foot strike) I had a particularly bad instance of knee pain and took a week off from running. I had a very good running week following that. My goal is to successfully complete this thon and have fun doing so. It will be my 25th anniversary of running my one and only other marathon. Should I have a couple of easy short runs or simply take the week off? Thoughts?? Thanks!
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Replies
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A couple of thoughts.
Making conscious changes to your stride during marathon training is a really bad idea. You need to be able to just run during marathon training. Introducing a new, forced foot-strike is playing with fire. It opens you up to all sorts of potential pain and/or injuries.
A 24 mile run during marathon training is overkill. Unless you are elite runner who can cover that distance in less than 3 hours, you are doing more harm than good going for that long. 3 to 3.5 hours tops is all you really need. Once you get beyond that, the recover time increases exponentially.
I think taking an entire week off would be counter productive. You need to keep the body aware that it is going to be asked to perform. I think cutting weekly mileage by 1/3 for the first week of taper and to 1/2 (including the marathon) is appropriate for a taper. With your low mileage, those numbers are skewed, so maybe 20 miles the first week of taper and then 2 to 3 runs or 2 to 3 miles during marathon week. During the last week, taking two days off is good. I prefer to run easy the day before the marathon and take off the day before that.0 -
Keeping for reference ....0
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I don't think I could make it 2 days without running let alone an entire week.0
