marathon taper ques.

I don't see why you should cut them out if you've been doing this all along. You'll be feeling anxious about the race and having your base swim and bike will probably be a good outlet for your energy. Just don't add to it or suddenly make it into something different than you've been doing all along - no intervals, or adding distance or time.

Unless of course you're feeling exhausted - marathon training is alot of effort! Then take 'em out or make them really easy and short.  You'll do great in your race either way!! :D best of luck!

I did this last year, and I did cut down on biking in the several weeks before the marathon as I did a final ramp-up of volume.  I didn't change my swimming during that time -- but I wasn't swimming much then anyway (3-4K/week).  In the first week of my 2-week taper I cut the bike entirely, but kept swimming (only 2-3K total), and in the second week of taper I cut everything except running.

This seemed to work fine for me.  Of course YMMV.  Good luck with the marathon!

Tapering is nothing more than reducing training load enough to allow your body to recover while doing enough to sustain the maximum amount of gained fitness. Every time you train you get fitter but you also can get proportionally more fatigue. Think it like this, every time you train you earn fitness and fatigue points. Usually fatigue points worth more than fitness point but fitness points linger longer than fatigue ones. IOW you get more tired after a session but you recover faster and the adaptation gains (fitness) will last longer.

The reasoning behind tapering is that you want to keep as much fitness as you have achieved during months of training but at the same time get rid of as much of the accumulated fatigue. When you taper you get rid of that fatigue but you can also start losing some of your hard earned fitness hence while the volume is diminished we still perform some intensity to generate enough load to ‘maintain’ your fitness while allowing your body to recover at the same time.

Whit that out of the way; you mainly want to reduce your running volume during tapering while keeping some runs (with some intensity like strides) to recover while maintaining fitness. Since you also bike and swim and if the marathon was an important race for me then *I* would keep some of those swim/bike sessions but I would keem'em short and easy for the last 10-14 days leading to the race to get a nice aerobic workout without the stress induced by running. Maybe something like 30-45 min swims and max 60 min bike ride.

No one knows you body better than you and tapering is very specific to the person; if reducing your running volume is plenty for you to feel that you are recovering and ready to kick booty at the mary then keep the swim/bike as it is, if you need more rest make swim/bike sessions shorter/easier and go from there. I prefer to lose a tad of fitness but making sure I am 100% recovered and ready for the race.

That just may be my favorite description of tapering ever, Jorge... think I'll have to copy/paste that into my training log

Trishie - i'm in a similar boat this week for a marathon. I'm going to do short bike rides on Monday/Wednesday; and those are also my swim days. I normally would bike on Friday, but that is out this week; and I'll probably drop the swim on Friday as well. If this were an A race for me, I'd probably drop the Wednesday bike as well.

Since you also don't list any intensity levels in any of the sessions I would also say that there is not a lot of reason to reduce them necessarily.  Normally you are just reducing overall load, not cutting back intensities.  I would probably make those swim and bike sessions on the lower end of the intensity scale myself and just keep the usual you have for running with reduced overall volume.  Jorge summed up nicely all about the taper process, so check that out and adjust your plans accordingly.

Yes, three weeks is plenty of time to recovery from that long run leading into your taper. 

For a solid exploration of the taper period and the relationship between fatigue and fitness, take a look at this post from Alan Couzens blog:

http://alancouzens.blogspot.com/2008/11/rocky-vi-fitness-v-fatigue.html

Thanks everyone.

Jorge, I really appreciate your post --- I always knew that taper was important, but I wasn't exactly sure why.  I'll be saving that - thanks!