Tapering tutorial;

It’s a scary thing to look at the calendar and realize that a race for which you’ve been preparing is just a week away. That final week of real training is typically not easy; you’re peaking and putting down performances that are a little startling. And with that difficult training comes a focus on just today, not on the race which is one day sooner each day. That final week of training is critical for a great race day performance and *fingers crossed* a personal best. But what is a taper, and how do you best execute one?

Throughout your training, you should gradually increase both volume and intensity until your training is very similar to your goal race effort. Towards the end of your training, Tapering is the practice of reducing training load during the days leading up to the race. Why? Wouldn’t it make sense to simply train into the race? Won’t a reduction in training result in a loss of fitness, and therefore a worse performance on race day?

It’s possible to improve performance on race day by 2-3% through a deliberate reduction in training because there are negative effects associated with training. The reduction in training helps reduce fatigue, which are the negative effects of training, many of which hamper performance on race days. 2-3% might now seem like much, but it can be enough for a personal best, and in competitive races, a good taper can be the difference between first and second place.

There are primarily three types of tapers:

1. Linear taper; Take current training load, and reduce it by the same amount each day until a rest day just before the race.
2. Single Step taper; for the taper period, complete only a percentage of the training in prior weeks. This method is common, however, it has been demonstrated as the least effective.
3. Exponential taper (Fast decay); Training is reduced by the same amount each day, say 30%. The prior days training load is used for the next calculation, resulting in an exponential reduction in training load.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to taper or need help with calculations, check out this Google Sheet for a one-week taper calculator. You’ll have to copy it to another sheet with the formulas in order to fill in your training load, if you have trouble please shoot me an email at brycoward@gmail.com and I can send you a version directly.