Countdown! 3 weeks to NN Marathon Rotterdam 2025
Hi all,
Welcome back to my running blog!
With less than 20 days to go until the NN Marathon Rotterdam 2025 I am very excited to start my taper weeks. Last 3 peak weeks went well but were also taxing both physically aswell as mentally. I managed to finish strong yesterday with an 31 km run bringing last weeks total to 100 km.
Taper weeks help you become fresh enough to start the race without losing to much of your athletic ability. You focus on maintaining the same intensity but with shorter distances. That way there is more time to recover.
My plan:
Below the guidelines for my taper weeks until the event (source: Advanced Marathoning - Pete Pfitzinger)
This week (left column) shows a schedure that comes to roughly 70 km this week (-30 km compared to last week). These are guidelines which you should make suitable to your every day schedule. For me, using this plan for quite some time - I learned that the speedwork in these weeks is a bit taxing for my knees (for example last sunday 31km - tuesday vo2 max interval… or saterday tuneup race => sunday long run) so I usually make some adjustments:
- For me, heavy long run (like yesterday) means slow recovery run the day after - to check for injuries and speed up recovery.
- Using the Thursday to shuffle some runs (for example the tune up race?) so you can start rested on the sunday long run.
The guidelines are really strong but it just needs some experimenting to tweak it to your personal needs!
Today slow recovery run. No injuries, blisters seem to be healing a little! All good!
Happy running!