All About Tapering
The big day is coming...you know you need to rest, but how much? The answer may surprise you, but especially for those of you training for a 100k or 100-miler, a 2 or 3 week taper is customary. Personally, if I’m sitting on the lower end of running volume in a training cycle and I’m training for a 50k or 50 miler I’ll do a 2 week taper, and given you’re reading this guide I’m assuming you’re not coming into a taper doing 100-mile weeks, so a 2 week taper is likely fine, though you might consider taking your foot off the gas at week 3. The cool part is, a proper taper can improve your race day performance by 3%! That’s not nothing, and that’s because your body is able to realize gains (get stronger) from that big peak training block you just put in during this time.
Remember: you get stronger during periods of rest, not during the workouts themselves! Keeping this mindset may help you when you get grumpy about not being able to run so much. ;)
The tactics of tapering
There are many taper strategies, but I’ll make this as simple as possible for you: starting 2-3 weeks out from race day start slashing your volume by 50%. Nerdy stuff but this is considered a nonlinear rapid decay taper, which takes volume off quickly at first.
So, if you were running 50 miles/week or 10 hours time-on-feet, reduce to 25 miles per week and 5 hours the 1st week, then 12.5(ish) miles/2.5 hours the next week, while keeping everything else the same (meaning, don’t change the frequency of your runs, terrain, days you run, etc, with the except being race week where you can make some strategic decisions on which days are best to rest).
Race week should look something like this:
(assuming your race is on Saturday)
- Monday: Rest
- Tuesday: shake out run, 2-4 miles with strides
- Wednesday: easy run, 3(ish) miles
- Thursday: Rest
- Friday: shake out run, 2(ish) miles with strides
A few things to cut when tapering:
1/ Structured speed work (you can *and should* do some strides or “pickups”, which can help keep you feeling fresh and keep those fast-twitch fibers and nerve signals strong in your muscles).
2/ Weight lifting. Stop this 2 weeks out from race day. I may continue upper body and core work until race week, but outside of that it’s best to keep the heavy lifting out of your plan altogether.
Things you shouldn’t cut:
1/ Don’t change the terrain you run on or days of the week until race week.
2/ Don’t change your diet! Continue eating according to your appetite: you may put on a lb or two during the taper and that’s totally fine! You need to fuel your body to fuel the recovery that’s happening.
Be warned: many people not only get irritable when tapering (because, less exercise) but also generally feel sluggish. Fear not! The heavy legs and lethargy come with a good taper and are perfectly normal: I promise you they will disappear on race day!
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