How to taper properly right before a targeted race

Today I want to explain about tapering. The meaning of tapering is reducing the training load from both points of view intensity and volume. The purpose of tapering is reducing the fatigue and get your body adapt to the training stimulus as much as possible without losing your fitness level.

The period of tapering usually lasts two weeks and to achieve the purpose, basic training is just easy runs. Sometimes doing moderate runs or easy to moderate runs is OK. And also you better do two workouts which the pace is approximately race pace.

Finally, the most important thing is how you feel with your race pace.

On the other hand, you feel good with running long and much slower than race pace, but it does not mean you are ready for a race.

On the other hand, you feel good with running short and fast like 20x400m for a marathoner, it does not mean you are ready for a marathon.

So in the last 2 weeks, you only do two race pace workouts 7-8 days before the race and 3-5 days before the race. The workout 4 days before the race is lighter than the workout 7-8 days before the race.

For example, for a half marathoner and marathoner, 10km fast run 7-8 days before the race and 5km fast run 4 days before the race und for a 10km runner, 5x2000m with two minutes recovery 7-8 days before the race and 10x400m with one minute recovery 4 days before the race.

In these workouts, you should not push at all and it is no problem at all to run a little slower than the race pace because the purpose of these workouts is not gaining something more but not to lose your fitness level. So it is better to run a bit too slow than to run too fast.

While running much faster than race pace gets you more tired (at least it bothers you to get fresh) and it does not help you to stay in race shape much.

And in the last three days before the race should be the easiest training like 30-40 minutes light jogging (shake out). And if you want, you can do some strides like 5-10x100m or 3-5x200m the day before the race.

If you have any questions, please let me know.