Taper, or resting before a race, is a key component of training and preparation. It basically means giving your legs and body a break during the week (or weeks, for longer races) before your event. In short, you run fewer miles than what you were doing during your peak training.
How much taper you need depends on the length of the race you’re attempting. For a marathon, it usually starts three to four weeks before race day, depending on your training plan. For a 5K or 10K, it means lighter mileage in the week leading up to it with possibly an extra day off. Since I include speed work in my training, for the week of a race I reduce the intensity of that workout, and\/or do it earlier in the week, or skip it altogether.
How much does the taper help? If you’re not adhering to it with precision, what’s the impact? There are obvious don’ts. Doing a twenty-mile run during the week before a race will hinder your performance. What if you run an easy four miles the day before the race instead of two to three? That’s more difficult to say. I’ve done both and I don’t know that it had a significant impact on my race performance.
Some taper depends on personal preference. If your race is Saturday and you want to take a day off right before it, whether that’s Thursday or Friday is up to you.\u00a0I like to get a few miles in the day before to stay loose but I try to make that run at least twenty-four hours before the start time.\u00a0
If you’re training for a specific 5K or 10K time, you may be doing a few events during your season leading up to a specific race where you think you can hit your goal. For any of these preliminary events, I don’t want to back off too much on the miles for the week leading up to them because I am preparing for one down the road. What I will do is adjust my mileage so that I cover more miles earlier in the week and I can do shorter runs in the few days before the race. It’s a semi-taper, so to speak.
Taper doesn’t guarantee a fast performance, it just means your body is relatively rested heading into the event. My general philosophy on race week and tapering is that you can’t do much to improve your performance but you can do a lot to screw it up. It’s a tough week because if you’re holding back after weeks of hard training, your muscles will get more and more revved up through the week and ready to bolt. But, the taper is a significant factor in giving you your best shot at hitting your time or distance goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taper, or resting before a race, is a key component of training and preparation. It basically means giving your legs and body a break during the week (or weeks, for longer races) before your event. In short, you run fewer miles than what you were doing during your peak training. How much taper you need … <\/p>\n