Tapering Abridged

The purpose of the taper is to translate all compounded fatigue into fitness, to fully recover all mental and physical systems, and to find optimal readiness before race day. Volume is reduced. Intensity might increase, remain static, or even decrease—depending on the level of the athlete.

A handful of taper strategies exist in the endurance sport zeitgeist. It can be confusing. Let’s look at the dominant approaches in clear terms.

The 2-week taper is the gold standard. Reduce volume by ~60-70% averaged out over the 2 weeks and introduce “sharpening” sessions; consecutive, brief intervals of high-intensity work to bring the nervous system up to the task (this work is present, in some form, for most taper strategies). 

However, the 10-day taper is currently having its time in the sun. For some of us, we are thinking, “10 days is good. If I don’t keep things rolling into race day, I feel flat on the starting line.” The 10-day taper is a less significant reduction in volume and a comparable up-adjustment in intensity when compared to the 2-week strategy. 

And lastly, the beefy 3-week taper. Approaches vary in this neck of the woods. For the sake of remaining succinct, this is well-intended anecdotal experience and observation. This strategy seems to work well for specific contexts. When the athlete is: 1) targeting a tune-up race, 2) moving up in distance, 3) preparing for an ultra-distance event, 4) aerobically fit but is lacking in strength/speed/pace-awareness, and lastly 5) thrives with a work-hard-recover-harder mentality.    

Tapering is one of the most un-universal aspects of endurance training. Let’s keep it that way. These strategies are offered as reference-points. But more importantly, if we stay keen to the process, with each pass, we fit a couple of the pieces together.

Anyone else really feeling that 11.78 day taper?! 🤓 I see you.