Pfitzinger plan and last week tapering

Rickshaw · Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:50 pm

Nearly all marathon training plans call for a "tapering" period for the last few weeks before a goal marathon, with a significantly reduced weekly mileage load, to help bring you to race day fresh and strong. Pfitzinger calls for a 3 week taper, with a 20-25% mileage reduction the first week, 40% reduction the second week, and 60% reduction the third week.

I've always thought the last week in Pfitzinger plans was a little too hard, and now I think I see why. His plan indeed has a 60% reduction vs peak mileage in the final week, but that's computed for a 6-day week, not including the marathon itself. If you look at that 6-day week vs the same 6-day period the week before, there's actually MORE mileage during the final week. Or look at it another way: if you plot the trailing 7 day's mileage for every day during the taper period, it drops steadily until about 10 days from marathon day, then holds steady, and finally actually increases. This doesn't seem right. Is this a mistake in the Pfitz plan?

Look at the last three weeks of the Pfitz 18-week, 55 mile per week plan:

M:
T: 8
W: 5
R:
F: 4
S: 10
S: 16
total: 43

M:
T: 7
W: 8
R:
F: 5
S:
S: 12
total: 32

M:
T: 6
W: 7
R:
F: 5
S: 4
S: race!
total: 22 (6 days per-race)

If you look at the trailing 7 days' mileage each day, it looks like this:

M: 49
T: 52
W: 47
R: 47
F: 41
S: 47
S: 43

M: 43
T: 42
W: 45
R: 45
F: 46
S: 36
S: 32

M: 32
T: 31
W: 30
R: 30
F: 30
S: 34

This doesn't look right. Trailing 7 day mileage is never reduced more than 46% from peak (30/55). Also, the trailing mileage doesn't really begin to drop until the Saturday 8 days before the race. The first 5 days of the middle taper week are actually tougher than the first five of the first taper week. You could argue that real tapering doesn't really begin until 9 days before the race, resulting in a taper period less than half of the intended 3 weeks.

It seems to me that the mileage during the 6-day Monday to Saturday period of the last week should actually be just 10, not 22. That would result in a trailing 7 day mileage of 22 on the day before the race, which would be a 60% reduction from peak (22/55).