The value of the taper.

Having just completed a marathon in a great time (for me) compared to my last marathon which was 4 weeks before on exactly the same route in very similar conditions, I notice the biggest difference was the training I had done leading up to both races was very different.

For both races I had the same mind-set when I set out - that was to maintain a steady target 3:15 pace (about 7:26 mpm) and see how things developed.

For the first marathon I had put several long runs in and was attempting to condition myself to run on already fairly tired legs. 

In the 4 weeks leading up to this race I have recorded the following long runs: 21m, 23m, 31m. Other runs included several 9-12m steady runs and the usual interval and tempo runs, only reducing things 6 days before the event.

Here are the splits for marathon 1:
1) 1m - 7:47
2) 1m - 7:40
3) 1m - 7:23
4) 1m - 7:10
5) 1m - 7:18
6) 1m - 7:19
7) 1m - 7:26
8) 1m - 7:28
9) 1m - 7:23
10) 1m - 7:30
11) 1m - 7:40
12) 1m - 7:46
13) 1m - 7:53
14) 1m - 8:05
15) 1m - 8:07
16) 1m - 8:07
17) 1m - 8:15
18) 1m - 8:13
19) 1m - 8:20
20) 1m - 8:20
21) 1m - 8:24
22) 1m - 8:39
23) 1m - 8:45
24) 1m - 8:32
25) 1m - 8:32
26) 1m - 8:19
27) 0.12m - 52

You can see that from mile 11 onwards my desired pace of sub 7:30 was no longer possible. The resulting time was 3:27:12

Now the 4 weeks between the 2 races I just did 1 long run (20m) a few interval and tempo runs but really slowed things down from a good 10 days before race day number 2.

Here are the splits for marathon 2:
1) 1m - 7:25
2) 1m - 7:21
3) 1m - 7:16
4) 1m - 7:17
5) 1m - 7:16
6) 1m - 7:16
7) 1m - 7:24
8) 1m - 7:19
9) 1m - 7:19
10) 1m - 7:15
11) 1m - 7:22
12) 1m - 7:20
13) 1m - 7:25
14) 1m - 7:25
15) 1m - 7:30
16) 1m - 7:32
17) 1m - 7:32
18) 1m - 7:32
19) 1m - 7:45
20) 1m - 7:48
21) 1m - 7:58
22) 1m - 8:06
23) 1m - 7:58
24) 1m - 8:01
25) 1m - 8:06
26) 1m - 7:52
27) 0.16m - 1:14

For this I maintained a sub 7:30 pace until mile 15 and even after this I didn't slow to + 8:00 pace until mile 22. The finish time of marathon 2 was: 3:17:32.
This shows that I could maintain this pace for much longer and the only significant difference between the 2 races was the training leading up to them - the second having less hard sessions allowing me to recover properly. There is no way the speed sessions between the 2 races could have made up for this improvement, so it has to be the reduction in hard/long sessions.

The morale of the story - rest is just as important as hard training and recovering properly before a key race can make all the difference. In this case 10 minutes in the space of 3 1/2 weeks.

Happy resting everyone