A friend once told me he thought of tapering as landing the plane. His meaning was that you want to come down from full training to race day smoothly and gradually, touching ground with plenty of runway. I think that’s a great way to think about tapering. Dropping abruptly might land you short of the runway leaving you to lose fitness or race on stagnant legs. An inadequate drop might leave you to overshoot the runway and race with a fatigued body. We want you to smoothly and gradually reduce the chronic and acute stress of training to have your legs optimally rested and tuned to race.
As with many flights, often your initial descent into the taper may include some turbulence. Some of this might be physical with some aches and pains you have been dragging through training or it might be mental with the craziness that an impending marathon will bring.
You may be tempted to cut way back in miles, workouts, or run days, but we know that your body thrives on routine and training rhythm so while there should be a noticeable reduction, your training week should still look very similar simply with reduced numbers and intensity. If you drop too much in these areas you can feel out of rhythm and have dead legs despite your fitness and rest. However, some runners will respond better to a greater decrease in training than others. Some might be able to back off by 25 to 33% while others might be better off just reducing by 10 to 20%. There are a number of factors that go into this but looking back at your training log and figuring out when your legs felt the best and what preceded those workouts or races will be a great clue for you.
Because the taper is prime time for your mind to run wild creating psychosomatic injuries and wearing you out by continuing to run you through the hamster wheel of crazy race day worries, it’s an ideal time to actually write out your plan. There is something quite calming about having a concrete plan to review when your mind enters the loop of doubt and fear. Your plan should include the agenda and time line for race weekend. For the actual race, think about how you want and expect to feel through the miles. Have contingency plans of what to do if there is a disconnect between how you feel and what your watch is telling you.
Of the many taper traps, perhaps the most compelling is to look for signs of fitness that cause you to overrun workouts. The faster you become the less likely it is that running goal pace is ever going to feel easy in training. There’s a reason why it’s called race pace and not training pace. There is a time for goal pace running but make sure it’s not when you should be resting for the real thing. If you want to look for signs of fitness, look back through your training log and your race results from the last few months to gain confidence.
In stressful and challenging situations I like to simplify. As we enter an important race week I like to remind my runners to run smart and run hard because those are the only two things that you can control. If you’ve done the work, running smart and running hard will allow a great performance to happen.