BAA Half Marathon Taper Time

Four days to go until the BAA Half Marathon. I’m starting to get excited and my mind is more and more pre-occupied with the race. At this point I’m in taper mode and have been thinking about the clothes I might need. I need to be prepared for whatever weather we get on race day. I’m also taking an inventory of my GUs and other race food to make sure I have what I need.

Taper Time and Recovery Time

With only four days to go, I’m in maintenance mode. At this point any additional training is not going to increase my speed or endurance. If I sustain an injury this close to the race there won’t be any time for a recovery.

It is time to be careful and try to take care of myself. I ran 9.29 miles on Sunday and 5.69 miles Tuesday night. I’ll probably do 5k Friday afternoon and that’s about it. Enough to maintain my fitness level and keep my legs loose.

My hamstring injury is pretty much behind me. It still hurts some times and I still get leg pain if I sit in my car for more than 45 minutes. But, the pain is not as bad as it used to be and takes much longer to hit me. My left calf muscle has been bothering me for the past week or so. As they say, there is always a pain, it just moves around.

Training and Therapy

In my last two races, a 10K and a 5K, I’ve set new PRs. I haven’t been putting in a lot of extra miles. I peaked at about 32 miles one week but have stayed in the 20-25 miles per week range for the past few months. I give a lot of the credit for my recent success to my physical therapy.

In addition to all kinds of stretching exercises my therapist has given me some good strengthening exercises. I’m working on muscles that I’ve never really paid much attention to, the glutes and all of the hip muscles. I didn’t really think these exercises would do more than help me recover, but I have no other explanation for my recent successes.

Strengthening these muscles has to be what is making the difference in my performance.
Most of the hamstring and piriformis work I have done has been stretching and not strengthening. The focus there has been to work out my scar tissue and get those muscles flexible again. I’m excited to see such amazing results from this effort. I never paid much attention to stretching before. I’m beginning to see the light though.

The Nugget of Wisdom

As I’ve mentioned many times before, if you do not stretch on a regular basis do not start a massive routine on race day while you are sitting around waiting for the start. Do not do anything new on race day. Nothing. It will mess you up. If you never stretch or only do some light stretches, doing 20 minutes of hard-core stretching is going to tear your muscles at the absolute worse time for this, minutes before a race. Don’t do it.

I encourage you to start a stretching routine and work it into your cross training or cool off routine. If you do it right and push yourself you will be amazed at the results. Just don’t start on race day, okay?

The BAA Half Marathon should be exciting. I’ve never run it before, but I know how well the BAA manages a race.

Run well my friends,

Andy

© anagelin 2012