How To Make Final Preps For Marathon

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's down to the wire for those participating in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon, with just over one week until the big race.

People have been preparing and training for a long time, and you'd hate to mess up your training so close to race day.

Natalie Nyhus talked with a trainer about what runners should be doing in the last stretch leading up to the race.

"(Runners) should be tapering off," Rebekah Mayer, national training manager at Life Time Run, said. "They probably did their longest run last weekend up to 20 miles and maybe even more. So now they are backing off and now they only have to do 14 to 16 miles this weekend. They get to rest and recover and get some quality runs so that they keep their legs feeling fast and fresh."

Rebekah offered a few options for runners this next week:

-- Try running intervals for cardiovascular conditioning.

-- Run a shorter stretch at your marathon pace so you get comfortable with that speed.

-- Try everything now that you will use on your race day: clothes, shoes, sports drinks, and so on.

Marathoners shouldn't run 26 miles this week; in fact, many don't run the full 26 ever, usually only running somewhere between 18 to 22 miles. That's because once you get above 3 or 4 hours running, the injury rate goes up.

For the last few miles, let the adrenaline take you through to the end.