Just like nailing down your short-term family budget and long-term planning for retirement, you should take a few hours to sit down and make a list of your running and fitness goals. If you like to run ultramarathons, marathons or half-marathons, chances are that you're familiar with the concepts of peaking and tapering. If not, this article will go into those topics and give you some idea of how to make them work for you.
Peaking and tapering for a long-distance race
There's no doubt that to be competitive in your age group while remaining injury-free in 5K and 10K races demand that you've trained properly. But when you step up to the half, the full, or the ultramarathon, a little more legwork is called for, so to speak.
- Peaking: Peaking is often explained as the process of gradually building up mileage to a peak before a target race. This is true, but in reality, the miles are just one component. This may work for a first long-distance race, but once that's done, you've established a baseline. To improve in subsequent runs, it's crucial to add in strength, stamina, and sustained speed. If the target race is a trail run, both weight training and hillwork is highly recommended. The rougher the trail is, the more important weight training becomes. Unlike road running, your upper body has to work hard to maintain balance while leaping over exposed roots and running on surfaces that slope in odd directions.
- Tapering: Tapering is the period between peaking and race day. The goal is to run enough to maintain your aerobic fitness and speed, but little enough to ensure that your muscle recovery from all those weekly long runs is 100%. This is a great time to focus on cross-training.
Use 5K races as training tools
5K runs are fun social events, but they should also be used as a tool in your long-term training plan. I like to use them as a substitute for a weekly tempo run. They should be planned in advance and put on the calendar.
The race calendar is your friend. When you decide on your target race, mark it on the home calendar. Then, starting with the current week, pencil in your current long run distance. Now, it's just a matter of following the 10% rule to pencil in your increasing mileage up to your peak. How far previous to race day should your peak be? In my opinion, two weeks, and then I begin my taper and spend time doing other cross-training, like swimming laps.
But here's the rub; it's not a good idea to do an added-distance long run (10% rule again) and a competitive 5K tempo run on the same weekend. The solution is to save the 5k races for the weekends between added-distance runs. That's one reason to work on the calendar early during your training plan. Don't be a slave to the plan though; stay flexible. There will always be things that come up. It might be a group event, a business trip, an illness, or even an impromptu hash.
Remember, running is fun, not a job!
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