It’s not too far away, you are full of excitement on the starting line of the Mainova Frankfurt Marathon. In the last few months you worked on your basic conditioning, you even did tempo training programs and prepared your body for the long distance. Maybe a few of the training sessions made you feel exhausted or you had the feeling it was extremely hard. The reason being, was because of the constant increase in your trainings regiment and this feeling is quite normal. Now, comes the most important part of the trainings phase for the complete preparation. The so-called tapering phase, and this begins 4 weeks before the marathon, so, just about now is the time to start it! The training takes to the back burner and now the regeneration part takes over. That doesn’t mean you can just completely stop running and leave your shoes in the corner. It means you must reduce your training sessions, so that your body can adjust to the training stress that you put your body through over the last few weeks and months. Your training sessions will be shorter and shorter and your training-free days more and more. Through this relaxation, you start to begin day to day feeling better. This is the signal that your overall conditioning has risen up to your marathon.
If you start to feel better from day to day, maybe you should get that positive feeling and use a competition as a test. A half marathon you can ideally participate 3 to 4 weeks before the marathon, or a 10-km competition 2 to 3 week before your start in Frankfurt. This test competition should foremost show us: My training the last months functioned and I’m fit for the marathon. Whether it’s a test for a new best time or just to test the average timing for the half marathon distance, it’s up to you. Important is that your fully confident when standing on the starting line in Frankfurt. Self-confidence never hurt another runner!
With this, the tapering phase is not to be used to catch up on those missed training sessions. Of you can however do another long run to clear your conscious, but your body wouldn’t have the chance to use this training to its fullest potential. Most importantly, you should use your time for the reduced training to catch up on all those things you missed out on. Such as meeting with friends, sitting in a café and enjoying your free time, you will see, that the excitement of the marathon gets bigger from day to day. And stay healthy, as a cold in the last day before marathon can jeopardize the whole project.
And now the 29th of October is there, YOUR PERSONAL MARATHON DAY! In the last 6 to 9 months, you did everything for your dream, you spent endless hours training and did without many things. Of course, you didn’t complete every training session or some of them didn’t work out like you wanted them to. But you continued to strive and motivated yourself anew. Respect! And now you are standing right here at the starting line and can’t wait until the starting gun sounds off. Enjoy this moment and everything that awaits you on the “big round through Frankfurt”, the red carpet awaits you in the Frankfurt Convention Center. You won’t forget this moment so easily. HAVE FUN!
