More on Tapering

Daily Quote: "Running is an unnatural act, except from enemies and to the bathroom." --Anonymous

Today would have been a Long Run if it wasn't a taper week, instead today is a General Aerobic Run. I wasn't quite sure what I should run today; maybe a shorter Long Run, or possibly a Medium-Long Run...finally after studying several running books training schedules decided that a 9 miler would do the trick.

Again, I'll quote Pfitzinger from "Road Racing for Serious Runners:"

"Prerace tapering is also important for distances shorter than a marathon. A study at the Human Performance Laboratory at East Carolina University supports the benefits of tapering for shorter races. The study comprised three well-matched groups of runners--a run-taper group, a cycle-taper group, and a control group. During a seven-day period, the run-taper group ran 400-meter intervals at 5k race pace and cut their training volume by 85 percent. The cycle-taper group performed roughly the same training as the run-taper group but trained exclusively on cycle ergometer. the control group continued with their normal training of approximately six miles per day and two or three days per week of interval training or fartlek.
The study found that those in the run-taper group improved their performance in a 5k time trails by about 2.8 percnet, roughtly 30 seconds for these runners. runners in the cycle-taper and control groups didn't improve significantly. The study suggests that drastic reductions in training volume combined with intervals can significantly improve race performance." End of Quote.

Today is a General Aerobic Run.
9 miles. Time, 1:24. Pace, 9:20 minutes per mile. Out and back on Lindell Route. Cloudy, 61 degrees, Wind S @ 10 mph. Average heart rate: 139 bpm. Cardiac Drift: 155 bpm. Gosh, my legs felt good not doing a long run today as my body and spirits are soaring! I'm uneasy cutting back this week's volume by 85%, as I'm also still in half-marathon training mode too, nevertheless the Salt Lake City Half Marathon is still two months away and I'll have plenty of time to recover and get back into heavy mileage training.