Tapering for a marathon
What to do?
We’ve talked about this topic many times over the years. Let’s cover a refresher on the do’s and don’ts of tapering for a marathon. You can certainly taper for other distances, but the marathon is what I’m most familiar with having just crossed the finish line of my 39th last weekend.
The taper is an interestingly combative topic at times. If you do it right and you’ve done your training you can walk into the race like a coiled spring ready to explode. If you do it wrong you can walk into the race with dead legs or feeling sluggish.
The whole point of a structured marathon training cycle is to have you peak at the right time. Training is the process of stressing the body and then letting it recover. As you go through the weeks of a marathon plan you will go through 3-6 cycles of stress and recovery. It depends on how long the program you are using is.
Typically these are 3 week cycles that progress easy->medium->hard over each cycle. Subsequent cycles peak at higher levels of intensity and volume. Even the Galloway programs are set up like this, they just do it much more gradually and over a longer training plan.
The final cycle of your plan will peak 2-3 weeks before your target race. This will be marked by your longest long run and you will begin to slide into the taper.
How long should the taper be? Most coaches will use 2-3 weeks as the taper period into the week. I have heard of 4 weeks and I have personally used 1 week when I was younger. It really depends on your age and fitness and how well you trained.
The bottom line is that if you have only trained marginally a perfect taper won’t save you. If you have trained very well a poor taper probably won’t hurt you that much. If your training is ‘just right’, like the little bear’s porridge, then you’ll want to have a good taper to compliment that training.
Let’s take a 3 week taper as an example. The first week of the taper would be right after your longest long run and start 20 days before the race date. This first week you’re not going to change much. You’re just going to lower your volume.
For me I run 2 harder workouts a week with the long run. In there I might also have 1 or 2 recovery runs or a spin.
For example: if you had peaked out with a 1:30 tempo run and a 10 rep hill workout you might do a 1:00 tempo run and a set of 6-8 hill reps or mix in a fartlek run for one of your hard work outs. The basic schedule is going to look like the same pattern, but with about 60%-80% of the load.
That first week of tempo ends 2 weeks before the race and your long run will be 13-15 miles with some of it at race pace or maybe closing the last few miles at race pace minus 10 seconds per mile.
The second week of taper is going to be the same thing. The same workout pattern but drop the intensity and volume by another 20% or so and start working in some focused stretching. Maybe a 40 minute tempo and a shorter fartlek. You might also start replacing some of your recovery runs and spins with rest days or shorter runs combined with stretching.
At the end of this second week of taper you will do your last long run and it will be in the 10-13 mile range, maybe with a fast finish. This is the weekend I like to schedule a good massage. I have my massage therapist work on any achy bits and help me do some deep stretching. This give you time to flush out any junk stirred up by the massage before race day.
I’ll also do any foot care that needs to be done, cutting my nails short, so incase I screw up it has a week to heal.
The last week before the race your won’t have any serious tempo work. For me it might be something like: A rest day on Monday with some stretching, Tuesday a 30-40 minute fartlek. Wednesday a rest day with some stretching. Thursday a short easy run. Friday a couple miles with a handful of pickups.
Saturday you’re typically at the expo and I usually take that as a rest day or go for a walk with the dog. If it’s a course I’m unfamiliar with I might go out and jog the last mile into the finish to learn the landmarks.
The key objective in your taper is to keep your legs awake, but not to stress them. All the work has been done and there is no way to cram for a race by loading in extra miles at the last minute. If you load in extra miles or intensity you can show up with dead legs.
The counterpoint to this is that you can’t just stop running in your taper. If you do that you will feel sluggish in the race.
The trick is to find that right balance of activity and rest that will allow you to show up with that spring compressed and ready to bounce.
The specific number of workouts, the form of those workouts, the duration and intensity will be determined by the training plan you executed leading up to the taper. The taper will end up being a toned down version of that.