Mental Toughness – The Taper
I have written several times on my blog about mental toughness but today I thought of a new tangent that I hadn’t covered.
We all know about the mental toughness in training and in racing. In training you have to push through workout after a long day on the job or when you are so tired from the long runs that even the thought of going out the door hurts.
And we are all aware of the mental aspect on race day. Whether, it is having the right mind set on race morning or keeping the faith during the race.
No, I am talking about something different. I am talking about the mental aspect of the taper before the big race.
The time between the last of the hard training and before race day arrives we have to give our bodies an opportunity to rest and rebound. This means backing down on the heavy mileage and/or reducing the frequency of the hard efforts or both.
For runners, this is indeed one of the toughest mental periods. We don’t like to slow down because if we slow down we feel like we are losing something. No, we think we need to push hard right up to race day and then race hard on race day.
This period of time is made harder because our bodies began to rebound from the heavy training and without the longer-harder workouts we have more free time for other things. Worst of all it gives us time to think.
No, as I said, maybe the toughest mental period for a runner is not the training for the race or the race itself but during the taper period. When we know we can do more but need to be doing less and mentally making sure that we do less.
Just remember – taper means taper and not pushing harder.
We all know about the mental toughness in training and in racing. In training you have to push through workout after a long day on the job or when you are so tired from the long runs that even the thought of going out the door hurts.
And we are all aware of the mental aspect on race day. Whether, it is having the right mind set on race morning or keeping the faith during the race.
No, I am talking about something different. I am talking about the mental aspect of the taper before the big race.
The time between the last of the hard training and before race day arrives we have to give our bodies an opportunity to rest and rebound. This means backing down on the heavy mileage and/or reducing the frequency of the hard efforts or both.
For runners, this is indeed one of the toughest mental periods. We don’t like to slow down because if we slow down we feel like we are losing something. No, we think we need to push hard right up to race day and then race hard on race day.
This period of time is made harder because our bodies began to rebound from the heavy training and without the longer-harder workouts we have more free time for other things. Worst of all it gives us time to think.
No, as I said, maybe the toughest mental period for a runner is not the training for the race or the race itself but during the taper period. When we know we can do more but need to be doing less and mentally making sure that we do less.
Just remember – taper means taper and not pushing harder.
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