Welcome to another episode of Ask Coach Parry, this time of the year a lot of people are looking at qualifying if they haven’t qualified yet.

End of January I know there are lots of marathons around South Africa that people do use. I think particularly in Gauteng there is the Johnson Crane, I know down in the Western Cape there are some as well, in KZN definitely a few.

Let’s say you are qualifying at the end of the month, that’s 2 weeks to go. Let’s talk about the taper in the build up to the marathon as part of your qualifying campaign. Obviously that is not your goal race, so it is a case of you need to taper but you still need to be training.

Brad Brown: Welcome to another episode of Ask Coach Parry, this time of the year a lot of people are looking at qualifying if they haven’t qualified yet.

End of January I know there are lots of marathons around South Africa that people do use. I think particularly in Gauteng there is the Johnson Crane, I know down in the Western Cape there are some as well, in KZN definitely a few.

Let’s say you are qualifying at the end of the month, that’s 2 weeks to go. Let’s talk about the taper in the build up to the marathon as part of your qualifying campaign. Obviously that is not your goal race, so it is a case of you need to taper but you still need to be training.

How do you get that balance right?

Lindsey Parry: You left out the most important one, we grew up just outside Welkom and they have got the Mielie marathon on the 24th of January. An interesting fact for you for the Mielie marathon is that it is actually the flattest marathon in South Africa, it’s flatter than the Vaal marathon.

But obviously it is hot. If you are looking for a fast marathon that is probably not a bad one to go for. Going into a taper, if you are planning to race a marathon, for me – provided you have done the work through January – it is probably not the worst time of the year.

Its maybe not ideal, I still feel like the end of last year is the time to be running a good marathon. Late in January is good, because it gives you time to recover nicely after that race and start building up again to that point where we want to be in March and April of doing our peak mileage.

Over the next 2 weeks you do want to freshen up your legs, particularly if you are looking to improve a ceding batch or trying to set a good qualifying standard. Actively, in the week that we are discussing right now, you want to be doing a maximum of 75% of your previous weeks’ training volumes.

Going into the final week, before you do the race, you will be doing a maximum of 50%. It is still quite important to keep a similar structure and to be running at similar intensities – perhaps even slightly higher – if you are doing some sort of intensity sessions.

We also don’t want to do so little in those 2 weeks that your body actually goes into a hibernation and you start to feel a little bit rubbish.

Cutting down nicely, making sure we train on similar days, at similar intensities so that we keep the physiology and also the muscles stimulated and get you to race day feeling ready to rock and roll.