Tapering for the Vancouver marathon

There's one week until the Vancouver Marathon. I absolutely love this time, the excitement is building, and so is your energy from the taper as you reduce training volume drastically.

After I ran the Vancouver Sun Run 10km in 40:09 (I'm going with my watch time since my timing chip was mixed up, see a previous post),and my third-fastest time for the distance, I did the fourth and final 5km time-trial as part of the Squamish Titans Tuesday Runs.

Tim, who also runs with this group, was keen to go hard, and so was I. For me, it was a bonus session, since my 10km time had confirmed my starting race pace for the marathon already. When we hit the first km in about 3:35, we both knew we'd begun way too fast. Oh well.

I held on to finish in 19:42, the slowest of my four 5km time-trials - the fastest was 19:30 a month ago. It was definitely time to taper! On Wednesday I took a day rest, and ran easy on Thursday, with marathon dog Luka, for about 30 minutes or so. Friday was another day off from running.
 

Sunday hike

My sister Angelique, who with her cat Piper and dog Punky stayed with us over the Easter weekend, and I went for an easy 1-hour trail run on Saturday. On Sunday Tim, Angelique and I did a 90-minute walk with the dogs.

Tim and the results of hard labour, a hedge of Cedars

We also worked in the yard, though Tim did most the hard work while I scrubbed and the next day painted a wall of our house. It was an active enough weekend, and I'll make sure to get lots of sleep this week.

Today I'll take the day off, and tomorrow I'll meet the Tuesday Runs group for 16th and final session of this block. Two others in the group are getting ready for the marathon, and the coach agreed we start the session with a light speed workout for the three of us. We'll go home, while the rest of the group will do a larger workout.

Tomorrow's workout is one that my superb former coach, Pat Carroll, had me do on the Tuesday before my marathons such as 2010 Rotterdam, for which he wrote my program. After a warm-up (jog followed by 4-6 strides), you do: 6 X 1min fast (with 30sec jogging rest), and then 4 X 30sec fast (with 30sec jogging rest).

On Wednesday, I'll likely do an easy 30 minutes. On Thursday, I'll do: warm-up, then 12 X (30sec fast, 30sec jog).

Tim and I are heading to Vancouver the day before the race and will stay overnight with my sister who lives an easy jog from the start line, which is a fantastic bonus. I'm super-excited about racing!

And, without getting ahead of ourselves, this weekend we planned my sister's training for her first half marathon in Canada (and her second ever) as well as for ... her first marathon! She's registered for the Scotiabank Half Marathon in Vancouver at the end of June and is planning to prepare then for the Victoria Marathon, awesome!