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It is week 11 of Chesebro Half Marathon training! Yay! Race day is less than 2 weeks away and I feel pretty good.

Every good training plan has a week or 2 of tapering before race day. What is tapering you ask? Tapering is when you gradually decrease your mileage to allow your body to rest and prepare for the big day. I personally love taper week. Some runners don’t deal well with the decrease in training. These people are usually marathoners who are used to heavy training miles for 6 months prior to race day. Then taper week(s) come and they don’t know what to do with themselves. I can’t say I ever experienced that feeling, not even when I trained for marathons. I like to embrace tapering.

Here’s how tapering works…

• Do your longest run two weeks before race day. I’m a day late with this run. I ran my last long (10 miles) today. Most people run their long run on Saturday or Sunday but I had my daughter’s 18th birthday party on Saturday and saved Sunday to be with my husband knowing I had Monday off for my long run. You have to be flexible.
• The first week of taper should be about 60% of your peak mileage. Most of the mileage decrease is on the long run, so your weekday runs shouldn’t change much.
• The final long run should be 6 to 8 miles the weekend before race day. I plan to run 6 miles on Friday because my daughter has a dance competition on Saturday and I work on Sunday. Being flexible.
• The final week should be about 40% of your peak mileage leading up to race day. To be completely honest I don’t actually calculate percentages, but I felt the need to give my readers the official way to taper. I estimate and go by how I feel. I know I need to take it easy and I do.

Embrace tapering. Take advantage of the little extra time you get to rest. Stretch, hydrate, take a power nap, write down what you are grateful for. It’s your time, do what you like.

I hope everyone had a great week last week! For whatever reason, I didn’t do very good at keeping track of my workouts. But here’s my week at a glance…

Monday

• 3.5 mile run in Palos Verdes. I love PV. It’s scenic and hilly. If I win the lottery I’m moving there! Actually there are so many places I love so it would be hard to choose my dream location. (Not likely I’m going to win anyway, I hardly ever play.) 😉 

  

Tuesday

• Work day. A busy work day at that. Nearly 13,000 steps.

Wednesday

• Rest day. I did arms and a 1 minute plank, but that’s about it.

Thursday

• 6 mile run. 

Friday

• 4 mile run. Then cooked and cleaned all day in preparation for Emma’s 18th birthday party. I was exhausted by bedtime.

Saturday

• Rest day. Hardly a rest day…  last minute preparation for the party, then a fun filled day with family (which includes 5 small, adorable, active grandkids)

Sunday

• 6 mile run.   3.5 with Sadie (my dog and favorite running partner) and then 2.5 with our 7 month old puppy Luna. This was her first run/sprint/walk. Then took her to the school nearby to do 25 second intervals. I think intervals is (are?) her thing. 🙂 

  

Have a wonderful week everyone! See you next week for the last post in this 12 week series.

Do you like to taper? 

Do you have a four-legged running partner?

Do you like to plan parties or do you prefer to let someone else do it?

Leave me a comment. I would love to hear what you have to say!

Thanks for reading!

Keep Running!

               Denise