Tapering your training for a marathon

How do you taper for a marathon?

This is a subject around which there is a fair bit of debate. Everyone has their own opinions and ultimately it often boils down to personal preference and what you feel comfortable with. But I believe there are some universally applicable rules that I’ll add my own spin on later in this article.

Firstly though, I’ll give you the way I approach it. This is the perfect time to discuss marathon tapering as I am now less than two weeks away from lining up at Berlin marathon for my first ever attempt at this course.

I am someone with 25 years of training underneath me and have run multiple sub 2:40 marathons, so the way I approach my taper is very different from someone who is just looking to complete their first marathon.

I don’t like tapers!

The first thing to say is that in general I do not enjoy it! When you’re used to high mileage and regular, large doses of endorphins from twice weekly long runs or intense threshold and interval sessions, my brain rebels when that is taken away. I tend to feel a bit sluggish and ‘lazy’ for not putting my body through the wringer several times a week. I also tend to feel heavy, especially in that final week where there is a bit of carb loading to be done. And in fact the scales will often agree with me, lower training volume and increased carbs means your body is storing glycogen which in turn drags water with it. But this isn’t you getting out of shape, there will be barely any fat accumulation. It’s fuel and fluid for what you’re about to put yourself through. I’ve come to accept this will happen, but it still feels a bit ‘meh’.

How do I adjust my training in the taper?

The last long run

I do my last long run about 2 weeks before. This won’t be an intense marathon paced session as I find those too damaging and difficult to recover from. The risk is too high for the possible rewards. This time, with 13 days to go I ran 17 miles at an easy to steady aerobic heart rate, which worked out about 6:45/mile, about 45sec per mile slower than race pace. This maintains the aerobic endurance and tissue resilience but without depleting the body too much. I make sure to fully fuel these sessions for optimal recovery. Too much glycogen depletion now could really compromise the rest of the week. With 7 days to go I will run 12-13 miles at about the same heart rate. Again, maintaining endurance, but easy to recover from in the remaining week.

Speed work.

This is the thing that might surprise people. I tend to keep fast 100m strides in the plan right up to race day. These are fast efforts but so short that any fatigue doesn’t stay in the body for any length of time. I do these as part of a warm up pre race, so keeping one or two 6-8x 100m efforts in the schedule with two weeks to go helps maintain leg speed and range of motion but won’t deplete any reserves. I don’t want to tighten up or lose any pop or kick. Having said that, I’ve not been able to do anywhere near as many of these in the Berlin build. My achilles tendon has really flared up after intense toe off type speed work and it’s only in the very latter part of this block that I have dared to add them.

Intervals

I have been able to do my usual intervals and feel this is another critical element to keep in my taper. A hard interval session probably takes me two or three days to recover from. With around 10days to go I will do something like 4x 1km at 5k race pace, or 5x 600m at 3k race pace, with plenty recovery between each rep to avoid too much lactate accumulation. Again, high quality work to keep my top end speed endurance, boost the VO2 max and ensure that my lactate threshold doesn’t start to drift in the wrong direction. The marathon for me is run pretty much on the cusp of LT1, so a small drop in my lactate threshold could have big effects on race day. In fact, I’d argue that this is the thing that has improved the most through my 12 week Berlin build. I was starting with comparatively poor fitness. I didn’t test it, but based on training performance my lactate threshold was sitting around 6:10-6:15/mile. I’d now estimate it at 5:55-6:00. That adds up to a lot of minutes over 26.2 miles! So I fully intend to maximise the training time I have left

Race pace practice

In the final week I put a dress rehearsal type session in the plan about three to four days before race day. After a steady warm up I run 3 miles at race intensity. This is a heart rate based session rather than pace, because I don’t like to predetermine my fitness levels and either force a pace which is too fast, or under sell myself because I think I’m less fit than I am. So by sticking to a heart rate zone, I get the race stimulus and then see where the pace is. It’ll guide me as to exactly how I’ll approach pacing the race at the weekend.

Aerobic and recovery runs

This is where the biggest shift comes in my taper. The bulk of the training block tends to contain midweek aerobic runs of 10-15 miles. These add a lot of volume and mean you’re generally continually training with a moderate level of fatigue. This is what you need to avoid. My aerobic/easy runs will drop to 7-8 miles and might only do one, instead I add an extra recovery run of 5-6 miles, just focusing on keeping the heart rate down and running about 2 minutes/mile slower than race pace.

Pre-race shakeout.

This is probably more for my mind than my body. But equally, when you’re running nearly every day of your life, your body is expecting it and so NOT running is more of a shock to the system. For Berlin, Friday is my travel day and the drive from Belfast to Dublin, airport stress, public transport, collection etc etc will be enough stress on the body. Saturday, the day before the race, is when I’ll do my final session. My pre-race shakeout runs are generally 30mins very easy, followed by 3-4x 100m strides at race pace. Enough to move the body and remind it that it needs to run fast, but low risk in terms of injury or fatigue.

And that’s it….next up is the Berlin marathon start line!

So what should you do for your taper?

As I have said, this really depends on your average training week and experience. For most the principle of “better to be slightly under trained and rested, than over trained and tired on the start line” is what you need to remember. Don’t do anything you’re likely to find tiring, don’t try to cram extra sessions in. You should be doing less running than usual. So for example, if you train three times a week, do two sessions in the week before the race. Don’t be afraid to keep some faster work in. You don’t need to go all out and risk injury, but some shorter intervals 10 days before and strides in the week before should get your body in a good place. If you’re carrying a niggle or injury and you’re in doubt about a session, then leave it out. Take an extra rest day. There’s little to be gained by pushing your luck, but a poorly judged session that’s too hard, could cost you dearly come race day.

Final thoughts

It’s a very fine line to tread, and every taper is slightly different and every athlete has a unique psychology and physiology. Unfortunately there’s no substitute for experience, and I mean your own personal experience. Each time you train, taper and race, you learn something you can apply to the next one. As ever, if you ask how to improve, learn and grow, my answer to this is to just keep showing up!