Tapering 101

Tapering can be a tricky process. Determining exactly how to taper depends not only on the race distance for which you are training but also on your personal preferences and experiences. What exactly does it mean to “taper”? Basically, you decrease your mileage in the days and weeks leading up to your goal race while still maintaining intensity in your workouts. Tapering allows your body to get more rest and repair muscle damage. During this time you end up with some free time on your hands, especially if you are tapering for longer distance races. Runners may feel a little anxious about their upcoming race and they may begin to second guess themselves about their training. This is a great time to reconnect with the world around you by spending more time with your family friends and working on fueling and hydrating your body for race day.

There are general guidelines for tapering, for instance you can successfully use a one week taper for shorter distances such as a 5k or 10k race. For a longer race distance such as a half marathon a suggested taper is two weeks long. You will want to decrease your weekly mileage by 35-40% two weeks out from your race and in the week leading into the race you should drop your weekly mileage by 60-65%. A marathon taper is generally 3 weeks long where you would decrease your weekly mileage by 20-25% during your first week of taper, 40% in the second week and then by 60% in the third week of taper. (These percentages are approximate guidelines. It is highly advisable that you figure out your best strategy through experimentation.)

When tapering you don’t want to suddenly stop all of your speed sessions and run everything easy. Instead, keep the speedwork built into your weekly schedule and simply shorten it. For instance, instead of running 6 x 1000 meters you could run 3 x 1000 meters. Instead of a 6 mile tempo run you can cut that in half and run a 3 mile tempo. Better yet, work on some goal pace miles instead so that you can get use to what your goal pace feels like.

As I said, tapering is a tricky and very individual process. What works for one person may not work for another. It takes a lot of experimentation to find out what works best for you. Plenty of people could argue that they do shorter tapers because otherwise they feel fatigued on race day. Some people bounce back quickly from 20 mile training runs and others need weeks to recover well from them. A good idea to keep track of your recovery rate is to keep a training log and record how you feel during and after your workouts. These are real gems when it comes time to review your training and pinpoint specific workouts which might have made or broken your race performance.

If you’ve never done a “proper” taper I would suggest sticking to the guidelines I’ve mentioned above and taking notes in your running log. Find out what works best for you and what doesn’t. The purpose of tapering is not to cram as much mileage or missed workouts into the weeks leading into your race as you can. This would be a huge disaster. The goal of the taper is to get you to the starting line in the best possible fitness possible and well rested. Ideally, you want to be peaking in your fitness and ready to tackle the miles and run your best pace.

I’m curious to know how long you taper for your races (all races between 5k – marathon distance.)

How long is your taper?
How does your running change?
What key workouts do you include in your taper?
Do your eating habits change and how?