Results & Recovery
Tapering is the Worst
Here we go: Tapering. Worst part of any training cycle. To be honest, I have no idea where I stand. Basically all test races turned out completely different than what I expected. While a carefully tapered 10k was the worst I ran for 5 years, I thrived at a 15k race just one week later. I also executed an excellent half-marathon at the end of a 115 km training week with a heart rate I would normally aim at over the marathon distance. It’s a wild mix and I can’t make any sense of it.
But this unpredictability not only happens in marathon training. Just one week after my first 100k mountain race, the CCC, which was studded with mysterious energy drop outs (we are speaking of 10 to 0, from one second to the other, while "0" means sitting on a stone, not being able to move), I ran my fastest trail half-marathon ever. When I tried to repeat that magic trick one year later after my first 100-miler, I ended up suffering through the worst race of my entire life, the ETC shorty at UTMB.
I practice in not overstating stuff like this. But even if I blank out all the figures & data and just focus on how I feel during races, I randomly range from "Let’s go for gold!" to "I feel terrible and want this to end." in any given race. We are not talking about nuances. It’s more like being a completely different runner who has either not trained at all for a race, or put months and months in his preparation.
I believe that the solution to solve this unpredictability is to be found in rest and recovery. Nothing can affect your training more radically than too much or not enough rest. Wait. Let me correct this: Too much rest usually is not the problem with 99% of ambitious runners, haha! You want, however, to get the work done and get a good amount of quality miles in. With that being said, running just twice a week and spending the remaining days on the couch can only get you so far. Therefore the challenge is to find the right balance between stressing your body and letting it rest. In my case it might not only be about the amount of recovery but also about the timing. Either way, still a lot of "trial & error" has to be done, until I solve this mystery.
But for now, let’s see how my tapering goes and how I feel on the start line in Kandel. What a thrill.
