The Final Countdown
Posted by Ed on November 18, 2019
It’s five days to go until the big day, the Rotorua Running Festival 50k, and I’m feeling a strange sort of cognitive dissonance about the whole thing.
This isn’t my first rodeo, but it is the first time I’ve really had a good solid training block followed by a well-executed taper. So it’s been interesting to observe the fluctuations in both my mood and physical condition over this past couple of weeks as my mileage has wound down.
I’ve had some previously non-existent aches and pains, including a twinge on my right LCL that I injured a few years ago that had me worried. I’ve also noticed I’ve been feeling a little bluer than usual, and work stresses have gotten to me more.
Yet, at the same time, I’ve been doing my research and time and time again been reminded of the fact that feeling sluggish and negative is both normal and expected during a taper. So, even in low moments, I’m quietly confident that the whole thing is going pretty well. The twinges went away faster than they popped up, and I’m hoping to turn up on race day feeling peppy and ready to roll.
Below, I’ve outlined how the last six to eight weeks of training/tapering have gone, perhaps more to soothe myself than anything else. It’s probably a boring read for anyone else, but I know I’m certainly guilty of reading other people’s blogs and figuring out their numbers, so perhaps it will be of interest to someone out there.
Training Numbers
In my biggest mileage week, I ran about 70km, with just over 1600m of vertical gain. My longest run was 36km, with 770m of climbing, and was preceded the day before by a relatively flat (for Auckland) run over 13km with 140m of climbing, along Tamaki drive.
The week previously, I ran 50km and climbed over 1300m. In the three weeks before that, I averaged only around 35km per week over four or five runs, but with well over 1000m of climbing.
I find the vert to be an extremely important part of this training block, not just because the race I’m training for is relatively hilly (1300m in 50k) but also because it gives some all-important context to some of the shorter runs – a flat 6km run is very different from a 6km run with over 200m of climbing, of which I did plenty during October.
If we’re going by time on my feet, I spent anywhere from four to eight hours a week running during October, and in my highest mileage week, I ran for eight and a half hours.
Tapering Numbers
A week after my biggest long run, which took me almost five hours, I ran a 23km/350m+ long run. My legs felt ‘comfortably numb’ throughout – not sprightly and lively, but by no means dead and unresponsive. The day before, I had done 13km and 280m, so I was pleased overall by how the long effort felt.
A downpour around the 17km mark meant I finished the run at a tempo pace, with all my gear on, and I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I felt. Hopefully, I will be able to preserve some leg speed for late in the race this Sunday.
I wanted to make sure I didn’t drop back on elevation gain too much this week. Throughout the week I felt like I was basically in recovery from the 36km long run, but that turned out to be a good thing as it was my birthday week, so a couple of celebratory meals prevented me from running anything substantial during the week. I certainly got in plenty of delicious recovery calories!
Overall I ran 45km and climbed around 750m.
The second week of my taper I knew it was time to make a concerted effort to ease off, although again not to the point of underworking myself.
On Tuesday I ran up Mount Eden, in a last-bid effort to get a ‘hard’ workout in before the crucial ten-day marker prevented such a workout from being counterproductive.
On the Saturday I met up with a very friendly chap off Reddit for a planned 7km run that turned into more like 11, with almost 300m of climbing. I had intended to go further the next day and do around 16km for a final ‘short long run’, but I decided to listen to my body and call it quits after 10km of running back and forth on trails in Auckland Domain.
I ran 36km overall but actually ended up climbing more than the week before, reaching nearly 800m. But overall, I think I took the week easier and finished feeling like I had avoided over-exerting myself.
This week, I plan to get in three runs before race day.
- Tuesday (today): a 6km run with a 2km warm-up, 2km mid-tempo (4:30/km pace or thereabouts) and 2km cooldown. One last moderate effort to keep the legs standing to attention.
- Thursday: 6km easy.
- Friday: 5km easy.
On Saturday, I’ll be catching a bus down to Rotorua at 10am. I thought about running a mile that morning, and perhaps I will, but I think with all the admin involved in getting down there, checking into the hostel, making sure I’ve eaten well etc., I’d rather just take it easy.
The only other variable to think about now is food. I follow a paleo-esque/LCHF diet day-to-day and have found great success with it, completing my five-hour long run without breakfast. In the days before the race, my plan is to moderately increase my carb intake in the form of rice and sweet potato. Nothing too drastic, but if I want to execute my plan of running the last third of the race relatively hard, I need to ensure my glycogen reserves are at the ready.
During the race, I plan to subsist mostly on dried fruit and Clif Bloks, with Nuun Tabs for electrolytes. I plan to start with one bottle half-full, or 250ml of water, and not refill my bottles until the second aid station at 10km. There are 7 aid stations, with gap between any two aid stations longer than 8km (although with 360m of climbing in that gap), so I feel confident that I will only have to use one 500ml bottle. I will be carrying a second one just in case, however.
