A Final Long Run

I have one more long run tomorrow and it will be time to taper for the Walt Disney World Marathon! Tomorrow is my 20 miler. I’ve done 15, 17, and 18 mile runs over the last few weeks building up to this final run for my usual “cross the finish line” training plan. I plan for it to take a full 4 hours. Unfortunately I caught a rhino virus over Christmas that decided to finally show up last night so Sunday’s 20 mile run should be interesting. As usual my long run will be slow or what runners call an LSD, a long slow distance run. If it were anything but the common cold I might have to skip the 20 miler and start tapering now, but we’ll see how it goes tomorrow. It may be that I do a 4 hour walk on Sunday which would be closer to a 12-13 miler, but regardless I am in it for a 4-hour time period.

I want to make sure that I am ready to stay on my feet and in motion for Sunday January 13th. I’ll be running the Disney Marathon with a friend who is going for her first Goofy challenge. It will also be her first marathon so having a couple people along for moral support will be a big help! You may even know her from the blog she writes! My friend is the force behind the We Wants the Redhead blog! Check it out!

We both run on the WDW Radio Running Team to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation through the Dream Team Project. We run to grant a child’s wish to go to Walt Disney World, a worthy cause if ever there was one! If you have an extra $5 dollars I would greatly appreciate the donation. I will be happy to dedicate a mile or two to you!

The Taper

Tapering is always interesting as you reduce your level of training significantly to allow your body rest, recovery, and repair for the big day. Next week assuming my cold is gone I will still do a tempo run and a day of interval training, but I won’t go for the top end speed as I usually would for those types of training. I’ll also decrease the amount of strength training I do to just one or two days as that kind of training can make you a bit tight and tapering is also about getting loose for the big day.

Two things I will increase are my time on the elliptical and sleep!  I’ll do the elliptical to maintain my calorie burn for the week. The holidays have not been kind to the number on my scale so over the next two weeks I am focused on a structured nutrition program and getting a good calorie burn each day.

The week leading up to the marathon will be light and primarily just easy sessions on the elliptical along with a couple short runs of less than 5-miles at an effortless pace and no weight lifting. Rest rest rest is on the training agenda!

I’m really looking forward to running my 3rd Disney Marathon. This will be my 6th full marathon overall and my 8th runDisney race! I hope to see some of you at Walt Disney World in a couple weeks!

Happy Training!

Brian

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