How to Test Your Marathon Fitness

Here’s the dilemma.  You want to test your fitness from all that training, but to do so properly, requires its own taper and you do not have time nor interest in that.  I have been training hard, perhaps too hard for months.  At every turn, I seem to hit a small snag.  A muscle here, a tendon there, a toe, a hip, now my lower back is feeling some pain.  It’s all connected, but I am just two weeks away from Chicago and my planned for 3:30 run where I will lop off nearly 14 minutes from my previous Personal Record (PR).   You need to do some tune-up races.  One long one (a half or 15K) is good along with a couple of 5K’s or maybe a 10K.  These can substitute for any hard day and you can count them as a VOMax day for the purpose of planning.  Should you taper for these?  My conclusion is that anything more than a 1 day rest before, just get’s in the way.  The problem with this is that you can’t assess your fitness accurately.  The advantage is that you might execute a PR despite the non-taper. 

Today was a great example of this.  Yesterday was a 15 mile marathon pace run.  This was a hard run.  Normally, I would not do a hard 5K the next day.  My plan was to do a recovery run while pacing my 14 year old son. Nice, easy, a little male bonding.  I could not wake my son, so I was on my own.  I did a good warm up, appreciated the relatively cool morning (about 70 degrees) and decided I would try to run hard.  I came in more than 30 seconds better than my previous PR (20:06).  The psychological boost was just what I needed going into Chicago.  The cooler weather and good competition got me going, but the benefit for the big event leaves me riding high.

Now that I am into my taper, my next blog is my critique of Arthur Lydiard, a true visionary and coach that changed how we all train.