Tapering
Cutting your training before a race — how much, for how long, and why feeling terrible in taper week is normal.
- Cut volume. Keep intensity and keep running as often as you normally do.
- Around two weeks, with volume down by roughly half, is what the evidence supports best.
- Feeling heavy, restless and slightly unwell during taper is common and not a warning sign.
- You cannot gain fitness in taper week. You can lose a race by trying to.
Cut how much you run. Keep how hard and how often. That sentence is most of tapering, and the second half is the part people get wrong.
What it is for
Training makes you fitter and also makes you tired, and the tiredness masks the fitness. A taper removes the accumulated fatigue while keeping the adaptation you spent months building — so the fitness that was there all along finally shows up on the day.
That is why tapering feels like doing nothing and produces something. You are not building. You are uncovering.
How much, and for how long
A 2007 meta-analysis of tapering studies found the most effective approach was a roughly two-week taper with training volume reduced by about 41 to 60 percent, with intensity and training frequency maintained rather than cut.
Two details in that are worth pulling out, because they are where most self-designed tapers go wrong:
- Intensity is maintained. You keep doing some fast running. Removing it leaves you feeling sluggish and flat on race day.
- Frequency is maintained. You run about as often as usual. The runs are shorter, not fewer.
Two weeks and roughly half the volume is a good default for a marathon or half. Shorter races need less — a 5K often needs only three or four easier days. Someone training six days a week has more to taper from than someone training three, and an older runner or one who has been carrying a niggle may want a little longer.
What a taper actually looks like
| Race | Taper | Volume | Keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5K | 3–5 days | Down ~30% | Short intervals mid-week |
| 10K | About a week | Down ~40% | One short quality session |
| Half marathon | 1–2 weeks | Down ~50% | A shortened tempo |
| Marathon | 2–3 weeks | Down ~50–60% | A shortened tempo, then strides |
How it should feel
Frequently, quite bad. Heavy legs, restless energy, phantom aches, disrupted sleep, and a persistent conviction that you have lost all your fitness. Runners call this the taper tantrum, and it is common enough that its absence is more unusual than its presence.
Two things are happening: your routine has changed, and the low-level discomfort you were too tired to notice is now the most interesting thing available. Neither means the taper is failing.
What runners commonly get wrong
- Cutting the hard running. The most common error, and it is the opposite of what the evidence supports. Fewer minutes, same intensity.
- Resting completely. Three days on the sofa before a marathon reliably produces heavy legs on the start line.
- Panic training. A long run added in the final week because the taper felt too easy. It cannot add fitness and it can absolutely add fatigue.
- Changing everything at once. New shoes, new breakfast, a new pre-race routine. Taper week is for removing variables.
The honest summary
Nothing you do in the last two weeks will make you fitter. Quite a lot of it can make you slower. The taper is the one part of a training block where the correct instruction is to do less and trust the work you have already done.
Use the spare attention on the plan instead — what your goal time actually asks of you, mile by mile.
Common questions
How long should a taper be?
Around two weeks is what the evidence supports best across endurance sports. In practice, marathon plans commonly use two to three weeks, half marathons one to two, and 5K and 10K races often need only a few easier days.
How much should I cut?
A meta-analysis of tapering studies found that reducing training volume by roughly 41 to 60 percent over about two weeks, while maintaining intensity and frequency, produced the largest performance gains — and that reducing it progressively across the taper worked better than dropping it in one step. Cutting volume much further, or cutting the hard sessions as well, did not.
Should I stop running completely in race week?
No. Complete rest tends to leave runners feeling flat and heavy on race day. Keep running, keep it short, and keep a small amount of faster running in.
Why do I feel awful during taper?
It is common enough to have a nickname. Reduced training changes your routine and your sleep, and the aches you were too busy to notice become obvious. It is not evidence that the taper is going wrong.
Will I lose fitness while tapering?
Not in two weeks. Detraining takes considerably longer, and the fatigue you shed is worth far more than the negligible fitness you might.
Tools for this
Sources
- Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis — Bosquet, Montpetit, Arvisais & Mujika — Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 39(8), 2007