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The taper is the final piece of your training plan, but one that it’s easy to overlook. Once you’ve done all the hard work and ticked off your training sessions (more or less), now it’s time to taper and let your body recover from those weeks of hard training.

A good taper can be the key to a great race day performance. But after weeks and weeks of running, some runners find this period of lower mileage difficult to navigate.

What is a taper?

Over the weeks of training towards your race, your mileage will have increased. How much running you did in your peak week will vary depending on your running experience and what race distance you’re training for. But one thing is true for all runners: you can’t jump into a race with tired legs and expect to perform at your best. Your body needs time to recover between the high mileage of your peak weeks and race day – and your taper period provides this.

During a taper you will still run regularly, but you’ll gradually do less of it. This gives your body a chance to recover, repair and get ready for race day so you can stand at the start of your race feeling fresh and ready to go.

Tapering for a marathon

If you’re training for a marathon, your training plan will include a three-week taper period. Your mileage will reduce each week after your last long run to allow your body to recover and absorb all that training so your legs feel fresh on race day.

While a lot of marathon runners look forward to their taper while they’re training, when it’s finally time to reduce their mileage it can leave them feeling that they ‘should be doing more’ or that they’re ‘losing fitness’. This isn’t the case. Trust the taper process.

It can help to have other things to distract you – watch a film about running or read a book. Just don’t do anything too energetic – your taper isn’t the time to take up a new sport. Leave that for after the marathon.

Read more on how to taper for a marathon.

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Tapering for a half marathon

Your taper for a half-marathon should start two week out from your race date. You don’t need as long as the taper for a marathon because your training volume (amount of miles you’re running) won’t be as high and therefore you won’t need as long to recover.

During the first week of your taper, your milage should reduce by 30-50% depending on how fatigued you’re feeling. So if you were doing 25 miles in total in your peak week of training, in your first taper week you’ll run around 12-17 miles. You should still keep your number of runs each week the same and if you regularly do speed sessions or interval session, you can include these too but reduce the length of these runs.

In the second week of your taper (which will also be race week) you should reduce your mileage even more and cut out any speed sessions and strength training. Just two 30-minute easy runs is enough to keep your legs moving. It takes around 7-10 days for any training you do to have an affect on your fitness, so there’s nothing to be gained during this week, you can only risk overdoing it.

Tapering for a 5k or 10k

Runners looking to race a 5k or 10k rarely need more than a week to taper. During race week, reduce the volume and intensity of any speedwork so that your sessions are no faster than your goal race pace. Doing a session such as 6x 1 minute at goal 5k or 10k pace with 1-2 min easy recovery early in the week can help solidify that feeling of your goal pace, but doing it in these short bursts won’t leave your body fatigued. Make sure you add a warm up and cool down.

Cut any strength training from your schedule during this week. Above all, try to relax and not do anything energetic in the day or two before your race.

Getting ready to race? Here’s how to recover after a marathon.