Mastering the Taper: Science-Backed Strategies for Peak Performance

You are listening to the Chasing PR podcast. In this week's episode, we are discussing the science and strategies behind tapering and how to optimize your pre-race training for big performance. Stay tuned. Hi, we are your host, Rochelle Weeks, and Diego Alcuberi. And with over 20 years of combined experience in coaching and physiotherapy, we created this podcast to help everyday runners who want to make the most out of their training and achieve new personal records while managing work, family, and life outside running. Welcome! Hello and welcome to another episode of Chasing PRs, I am Diego. I'm Rochelle. And we are happy to be back, right? Because last week was a very different episode, I hope you liked it. We have a few good reviews about it, but yeah, it was a different, so we are happy to be back. Yeah, nice to be back in the normal routine. In quotes live, because it's not live, but it's in the same week. Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about tapering this week. So a lot of us are starting to taper. I'm starting my taper next Monday. You're starting like in two weeks after. Yeah. So everyone that is running a spring marathon, it's going to start tapering soon. So we thought it was a great timing to start talking about tapering. And we're going to talk about the science behind some math and how the what's the best approach to do it. And we're talking just before the start recording that people sometimes treat tapering like an afterthought, right? Like, yeah, I'm going to taper. I'm going to just reduce my volume and just going to run less, sorry. But there's a science to it. And if you put so many work on training during 16, 20 weeks, not trading tapering the right way can be just perfect for your performance. Yeah, you owe it to yourself to nail the taper down and do it right. Because you could have the best build ever. And if you don't get the taper right, you might lose some performance on race day. Well, I think a very important thing to say is that tapering, we're going to talk about the science, but it's more like an art. Absolutely, because we're running bodies. Everyone is different. So you're going to respond differently to things. We're going to talk about some examples. You can use this as guidelines. These guidance work like 90% of the time sometimes. But it's an art that you can tweak and make specific to your own needs and how you build races. Perfect. We're going to start with two chasing sprints today. There are some fun and different chasing sprints. Because there are things that happened to us in the past few weeks. One is, I mean, a Boston marathon Facebook. I'm really close to it. It's too much. Too much, the exam. But someone posted a very interesting question the other day. And it's related to a podcast we deal already about fueling. I think it was a very popular podcast. It's all for us. And the question was something in another podcast said that it's very close to what we said. It's like, okay, you need to fuel around every 30 minutes. Or three, four, five kilometers. But her question was like, everyone says every 30 minutes. But the calorie needs or how many calories you can expand between now 120 pound women and at 200 pound men are very different. 200 pound men is going to burn a lot more calories during the marathon. So her question was like, what can we do about it? And we thought about this. And her question has merit, right? And I think it's a very insightful question. And she's really thinking about how to improve. But if you think that, have you, have you measured how many calories you burned during the marathon? Burn? No. Next, I mean, I work our means tell us, and it's a ballpark, right? But for example, for me, it's like 3500 calories. Which you're not replenishing during the marathon. That's my point. You are not, you are not consuming 3500 calories. Six, seven hundred if you are really good at it. Usually I just consume between four or five hundred. So the answer is that it's like, you are not replenishing all your calories expenditure. It just, you are just helping your body as much as you can. So that my point is that that 30 minute four, five, six, kill every four, five, six kilometers makes sense. No matter your weight, your age, for everyone. Yeah, for everyone. So that's because you are just replenishing as much as you can, but not you want to do everything. And though you'd be sick to your stomach on the sidelines if you tried to take shouldn't everything that you burned out in goose. No, yeah, you could see so gross. I even got sick of markings during my last marathon. My mouth was like sugar. And I need to rinse my mouth. And then she asked me like a full of questions. What about electrolytes? It's not the same. One is sweating more than the other and the answer is the same one. You are not replenishing all your electrolyte during a run. You're just doing the best you can and the guidelines work for everyone. Yeah, that makes sense. And anytime I follow a few different dietitians who I really respect and whenever they're talking about what you need during a run, it's never like you're 200 pounds you need this. If you're 120, you need this. It's just if you're running, this is what you should. There's a little bit of a range, but it has nothing to do with your weight. It has everything to do with what your stomach can handle. Exactly. The range is, that was what I was going to say. The range is the more the better, but it's how much you can. Yeah, train your stomach to handle it. Yeah, we talk about a lot that you can train your stomach. That those people that say, I can't handle it. You can't handle it yet. I love that work with my daughter. Yeah, I can't do it yet. Yes, I think they hate me because of that. And the other interesting thing is that you know the goal of the podcast is to help everyday runners that we have a life, family, work, and the more you move, the better you're going to perform, and overall your health is going to be better. You are very lucky because your work involves a lot of moving. I see you all day up, down, walking, running, not running, but just demonstrating exercises, and even just getting on the treadmill to run and show someone an example of something. That's, yeah, just getting from from your chair and greeting a new patient. It's a 20-minute, 20-meter walk, something like that, but it's constantly all day. So you move all day. Yeah. Someone like me that it's on my chair all day if I'm not running. And 90% of us are like that, right? We work at the day. Yeah. And more of more of us are working at home. So I found myself just working at my dining table. So I was having breakfast. I moved my plate aside. I put my computer in. Four hours later, I bring lunch, move the computer out, and it was like, shit, I'm moving really little beside my running and my morning mobility routine. So what I did is I set up a small office in my basement. So now every time I need to go to the bathroom or have a drink of water, or have a nap, or whatever, I just need to go up. You took my mouth the stairs. Exactly. So it was a small hack I found to move more during my day. I don't know if it's going to make a huge impact in my marathon time, but in my overall health and over the long run, I think it can make a huge difference. It's interesting because since the pandemic, a lot of people are working from home, the who you normally wouldn't be. And a lot of people have gotten the purchase the sit-to-stand desks. So some people come in and they're standing all day with these desks. And a really interesting study came out before Christmas, talking about, basically, if you stand at your desk for eight hours, it's the equivalent of almost walking a full marathon. Okay. So if you run 30 kilometers or 25 kilometers on a Sunday, and you go to work Monday and you stand all day, you run close to a marathon distance on the Sunday, and now you're walking close to it. If you stand all day Monday. A lot of very interesting. So they're called sit-to-stand desks. You don't necessarily have to stand all day. Or you need to build endurance to stand up all day. Yeah. Right. I know Dean Carnassis. He's known as the ultra marathon man. Yes. Yeah. He works in a stand-up desk all day. But I don't think he ever stays still. I've read a couple of his books and he's always on the move. So you just need to build endurance. And I guess I know when I'm standing a lot, my back hurts. Like, crazy. Yeah. And it's not great for recovery, too. Like if you're trying to, if it's a day after a big long run or a speed session and you're just standing all day, it's best to do a little, like everything in life, moderate, moderation. Do a little bit of up, down, lay on your stomach for a bit. If you need to, just don't fall asleep while you're working. Well, yeah. Those are the two chasing sprints this week. Just fun, different and just little hacks and questions that we read about, read about online. So how was your last training week? Last week was, I'm back to singing. Last week was good. That was good. Yeah, I hit 81 kilometers. So I think I may go 81 was total. Yeah, I think I may go to 85 and that'll be it. I kind of had, it's funny, I had 90. I wanted to get to at least 80 in my build for St. Lawrence, Marathon. And then maybe 90 if I could. And because I had set that 90 goal, I really want to get it. But if I do 85 this week, I did 81 last week. I did a bunch of weeks at 75, 81 last week. If I do 85, I don't want to go quickly to 90. And really what's another 5K? Just one week of doing an extra 5K is going to do nothing. It's just me being weird with my goals. Like I said, I wanted to do 90. So I'm going to shut that down and just do 85. This week or next week, I'll see. And that'll be my peak. Are you planning to do those four more kilometers during the long run or spread during the week? Two will have-- no, one kilometer will happen during the long run. Because I did 31 and this week I'm going to do 32. So it'll be during the week. So I'll do a little bit more. I'm going to do 18K for my midweek long run. So I did 16 last week. I'll do 18 this week. Cool. And then 18 today else. And did you run-- no, you did your long run Saturday. Yeah, so you feel. No, this week I did it on Sunday. I'm thinking it's Monday because we normally record Monday. Yes, OK, so you've had a rest day. You did the basketball with your daughter yesterday, yeah. So yeah, it was good. 81 kilometers, the speed session was fun on Thursday because we got 12, 800s with a two minute break. So it was a nice long break. So we were able to go a little bit quicker. Yeah, bring these just around the corner, I think. Although it didn't totally feel like it's Sunday when we were running in the snow, but-- It's crazy. One day you'll think, I spring is here, and everything's going to be awesome. And the next day, you'll have a snow trip. I should mention something. If any people want to know more about strength training, we did a whole episode on it. But last week was the first week I found it hard to get my two 30, 45 minute strength sessions in. So I cut them down in 20 minutes. So I totally simplified what I was doing. Kind of got rid of a lot of the dynamic stuff in the warm up and some of the stuff at the end and just kept it simple with like five, six exercises, two sets of eight. That's interesting. So it took like 20 minutes. And I did it twice last week. I did it again last night. And I feel like that's mentally that's what I need right now. Yeah, it's not the same to do 70 kilometer weeks and two big strength training sessions and 81. It's in quotes only 10 kilometers per itself. Now we're more of running over. Yeah. And I find I'm running more on my lunch break. So I'm doing the strength in the evenings. And I just, by the time I put my daughter to bed and I come down the stairs, 20 minutes is all I have the energy for. Yeah. And they seemed like an hour, right? Yeah, yeah. So and I know I'll keep the strength. I worked hard, I'll winter to build my strength. That's not going to go anywhere in a month and I'll maintain it, which is two shorter sessions. OK, and we're going to talk about how to taper strength training in a few seconds. And I'm going to ask you how you're going to approach it in the next four weeks. My week was good. It was down my down week. But I approached it in a very different way because I had a down week, but I did my long run. So I switched my long run between Saturday and Sunday, depending on what I have to do with my life. I like to do them on Saturdays morning. But sometimes I do it on Sunday because life happens on Saturdays. So, two weeks ago, I did my long run on Saturday. So I thought, if I start my taper tomorrow, Sunday, instead-- not my taper, sorry, my down week on Sunday, instead of Monday, I can have a seven week, seven day down week. And next Sunday, I'm going to do my long run. So I think I did 49 kilometers only that seven day span from Sunday to Friday, from Sunday to Saturday, sorry. And that didn't include a long run. And that was the note. Exactly. And then Sunday, I had a long run. So I had a down week with long run. Yeah. So I was able to squeeze an extra long run and feeling good because I had only 49 kilometers during the seven day span. Just for changing from Saturday to Sunday, my long run sometimes. Yeah. I thought about it during my long run on Saturday, like, how can I squeeze a long run next week? And that's why I did. Moving the runs around, a lot of people don't really think about that. But I've had a patient ask me how I do a midweek long run Wednesday, followed by track on Thursday. She was like, aren't you tired at track? But I do my midweek long run Wednesday morning. And track is not until 5.30 Thursday night. So by the time track rolls around, I've had over 24 hours to feel great and recover. And it doesn't affect me. And I go slow on Wednesdays. Yeah. I keep it really easy. But yeah, playing around with like, when you run in the timing can really help. And I was thinking, that's very interesting because I was thinking about this, this past weekend. If I do my long runs on Saturday morning and my second long run but shorter on Sunday afternoon, I would have way more time to recover for that long run. And that run is going to feel better. And I tried it this, this past weekend. I did my easy run. I have two double long runs, right? One is like 27 kilometers right now. And the other one is 17. So I did that on Saturday morning. And I went to my long run on Saturday afternoon. So you have more time to recover. And you give your body more time to assimilate the training. It's very interesting. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And this weekend, I'm going to do 90K again. 56 smiles. And this is my last week of real training. Yeah. And starting tapering, that is it. Tapering time. Tapering time. So what's tapering? So there's a bunch of definitions. But the one I like is the tapers, it's a period of reduced training in order to prepare for an upcoming competition. And I say competition because you can taper for a swimming event, for a ski race, you can taper for a sports tournament. It's not just specific to running, but in this case, we're going to cover everything related to running, of course. Okay. So what do you mean or what does prepare to an upcoming competition means? So you basically are going to reduce your amount of running. And we're going to talk about it. Like, do you address? There's three things you can address. So there's how frequently you're running, the volume that you're running, and then the intensity of your running. So you play with those variables by bringing them down, and we'll talk about how it's not all of them. And so you feel fresh on race day because you can be the fittest person in that race and the fastest person in that race. But if you haven't hit your taper right, you're going to have fatigue that's going to mask your performance. So your performance on race day is your fitness minus your fatigue. And the heavier the fatigue, the more it's going to take away from the performance. The taper's responsibility is to lessen some of the fatigue. But then if you go too aggressive with the taper, you can start to lose fitness. So this is why it's beginning. It's an art. You reduce your running mainly the volume, but you reduce your running volume so that you feel fresher, but not by so much that you don't feel fit race day. Yeah, because it's important when we're training and you're building mileage and intensity over the weeks, the goal is to fatigue your body. So the body can assimilate it and improve. Because he, but the body doesn't like to be fatigue, doesn't like to be stressed. So that's what training is like. I fatigue and I stress my body. Give him time to recover and he says, Oh, shit, I need to improve. I need to have more mitochondria. I need to prove my fitness and my endurance and my whatever. And you fatigue it and fatigue and fatigue and your body response and repulsion response. And the taper goal is that continue to have this fitness, but giving your body more time to recover, more time to assimilate your all these weeks and weeks and weeks of training and be ideally in your peak performance on racing. And I'm going to give you a number. We want to sell you. We like to sell you the idea. So if you taper properly, you can improve up to 3% your times. Yeah, 3% doesn't sound like much. But, for example, you are running a, you're going to run around 330 more. Yeah. Right? A 3% improvement, it's 5 minutes faster. That's a lot. From 325 to 330, just because you taper, your training was the same and you taper correctly and or not, that's a 5-minute difference. And I love tips like that to improve performance that don't involve running more and working harder and doing more. This is like, if you nail the taper and you just do your research and figure it out, you're actually doing less and getting faster. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, 20 minutes 5K, that's a 36 second difference. In my view, in my opinion, it seems, that seems way more than 5 minutes in a marathon. 36 seconds in a 5K, it's, it's, I will feel very different if I run 20 minutes 5K than a 19th area. Yeah. Almost 1925. And, and I have some, some friends, we have some teamy to every spring, they do a marathon and every fall, they do a marathon. And they'll do a 5K either before or after. But it's not the 5K that they're focused on. So they just, they don't taper for it. And then they're like, this is my fastest 5K and I'm like, it's not though. Yeah. Because if you had tapered for it and made the 5K or a race, well, you could probably take a good few seconds off of it. At least 30 seconds. And the more, the, the slower you run the 5K, the more the improvement it's going to be. Yeah. So the slower renters, it's even more important, deeper properly. Yeah, you will feel way better with the times 30 minutes, it's almost 90 seconds. I can do the math right now, that fast to tell you 3% of 30 minutes. But it's worth it. Yeah. So, okay, that's what taper is, that those are the benefits of tapering. We're going to talk about how to taper properly based on a lot of reasoning. Because like you said, a lot of people just go by feel. I'm just going to run a little bit last see my legs feel, but do it right. Or very randomly, right? Yeah. Yeah, I did a 30 kilometer long run, 20 mile long run. Let's talk about 20 mile, a 20 mile long run that is 32 kilometers. Yeah, next week I'm going to do 25 and next week, like 15. Why? Just random numbers that ideally make sense, but maybe it's not the best way. We're going to talk about some really specific percentage that you can start trying. Maybe they work for you, maybe not, but it's a great way to start. So, you just mentioned three things you can change during taper. Intensity, frequency, and volume. Let's start with frequency. What? You don't change frequency. Yeah, basically you leave it alone. So, and this is all very much research-based. This isn't just we've been running for the years and this what works for us. This is what the science is saying. Leave frequency alone. If you run five days a week, you can continue to run five days during the taper. Four days, six days, whatever it is, you just keep it the same. Don't, don't lower it. That's not where you're going to get the benefits from lowering your frequency. It's not there. Yep. And I think it's really interesting that if you use the more you do things consistently, it's better for your mindset and just doing things easier. I've done a taper where I was running six days a week, and then in the taper, I ran like three, four days a week. And I felt like garbage race day. And on the days I wasn't running, I felt like guilty and I felt a little bit lost and psychologically it like messed me up. And then race day, I was like, I'm so out of shape. I'm not going to be able to do well and I didn't have a good race. Yeah, you know, you know how to do. If you are used to go every morning or whatever time you go running, and all the sudden you are sitting in your house. I don't know what to do. Not moving. Yeah, and you get anxious and desperate and guilty, as you just say. So just leave frequency alone. The however days you are running right now, leave that to your taper. Yeah. Then let's talk about intensity. How your intensity should move or be different during the taper. Yeah, that's the, I feel like that's the most interesting one, because I feel like naturally you think if you're tapering and you're trying to reduce fatigue, you should also slow down. Because then you're going to feel more fresh on race day, but that's not the case. You actually want to keep your intensity the same. So the amount of high intensity running, if you're normally, say if you normally do 800 meters on Thursdays at a track, and that's your speed work, you would still do 800 meters. Like you would still at the same intensity. So whatever pace you do would be the same. But then we'll talk about volume and the next thing is you. When I think intensity is like, how fast are you running? How fast are you running your long runs, your race runs, your speed sessions? You just keep the speed of your runs the same. That's what we mean by intensity. And they've done research where they've tried to slow people down for that, and they haven't done as well on race day. So it has been proven to show that if you keep the intensity the same, you do better. But your intensity mileage, your intensity volume, it's going to be less. So you're going to be running less kilometers at the same intensity. During taper, for instance. Yeah. Because the third variable that we can change, we already took out frequency, intensity doesn't move. For example, if you are doing 80/20, we talk about that a lot. 80% of your mileage is slow, and 20% of your mileage is fast. You just need to keep that. So if you're running 100 kilometers weeks, and you're running 20 kilometers fast, and you're starting to taper and you do 80 kilometers weeks, you only do 16 kilometers fast. Yeah. But as fast as the 20 kilometers. Yeah, it's still just as fast. Exactly, it's just less volume. And that's the key thing you need to change or play with when you're tripping. Yeah. We're going to talk about. I hate this, because there's a lot of. How can Giver Java about tapering, and a lot of people and coaches just throw numbers? Yeah, between 60% less. Between 40% and 60% less. Sometimes someone's just been coaching for 20 years, and they've done well with it, so they just do that. But it's not actually science-based. It's just based on their experience. And it totally is what works for them. But how do they not know that doing it more science-based and following the more specific numbers wouldn't help more? And I think you need to have. We talk about consistency and a routine. And if you mess with the runner's mindset. Yeah, I just run around between 40% and 60% less. If someone tells me that, I will go crazy. It's too big of a range. Because how much? How I know I'm doing. I'm maximizing my time. I might jump ring, and the time I'm training. Between 40% and 60%, at least to me, tells me absolutely nothing. But we're going to talk about it. So volume is, if you're not changing your frequency, if you are not changing your intensity, how can you change your volume? Yeah, you're just running less. And so, yeah, you're long run. If you do your long run on a Sunday, it's a shorter long run. If you do 10K tempo or something, like say you do a 2K warm-up, and then you do 5K tempo on Tuesdays as like tempo effort. And then you finish the run to get 10K long. Maybe you do a 3K tempo instead of a 5K tempo and shorten the warm-up and cool down. Like, everything just gets. Shorter. It's the same as the shorter. Midweek-long run is 18K. Now, maybe it's 14, 15. Yeah. That's. So, try to. We talk about this a lot. We try to simplify things as much. I try to do it in my life. But yeah, the easiest way is just you're going to run the same days at the same intensity or same pace, just shorter. Yeah. How shorter and for how long? That's. That's. That's the usage. You should think about this. How long should tapers be? And. How I'm going to reduce this volume, right? So. Ideally or not, ideally? A taper should be. Not should be. It's very hard because I hate to tell people, "You should do this." Because you shouldn't. You can try it. Yeah. It needs a lot of work. But usually, let's say that, tapers last between one and four weeks. And we were just researching for this episode. And there's people super experienced and super recognized about tapering that says two weeks tapering is dead. It's like king, yes. But then you find another research. That says three weeks is. So how long is a proper taper? You need to try. But we found a very interesting study that analyzed the tapering period of 158,000 runners. That were preparing for a marathon. It was a massive study. I like this study. Why? Because when we find studies, it's usually 12 runners. Yeah. Very runners. Or it's a study with swimmers and skiers and runners. So it's not like specific just to running. This is like just runners and a lot of them. Yes. To be fair, they didn't interview those runners. They just pulled their information from straw. Interviewing would take years for that many. But they analyzed that. And they found out that people that did a three weeks trick taper. We're going to talk about what trick taper is. Had the best results. And were the ones able to achieve that 3% that we talked at the beginning. And I love that number because what you say. You hear that 3% everywhere, right? If you hear. If you read an article about tapering, you're going to read. Oh yeah, you can improve up to 3%. When how? When. Show me the numbers, right? And this study, they didn't. Their goal wasn't to prove the 3%, it was just what the beta tapering strategy. And the best tapering strategy produced 3% improvements. Right. I thought it was real quick. So a three weeks trick taper. You want to explain why this trick versus relaxes? Strict is more. So relax sounded like it was more. You're kind of going by feel like we talked about. Like you know you should run last, but you're not really sure. So you just each day, you just kind of go by feel. You wake up and you think, "Oh, I'm going to do this." Strict is more, you have a very strict plan and eat for three weeks and you follow it, regardless of how you feel. Yeah. But because a lot of people during tapering, and we're going to talk about the cycle. Well, let's talk about really quick about the psychological effects of tapering. Because. Will you. I. Well, how do you feel during tapering? It. I always look forward to the taper. Like, I'm like, "Oh, it's deeper time. I get to reduce my volume." And then I often don't like it when I'm in it. I feel like I should be running more. I'm worried that I'm losing fitness. even though all the research tells me that I'm not. So there's a little bit of anxiety during the taper. And you feel every little niggle, like you go up this stairs, oh my god, was that my kill? It's not, was that my knee? And you panic a little bit when it's nothing, just because you've got some anxiety, because race stays coming. Yeah, I think 90% of runners, including myself, feel that way during taper. You feel sluggish. You feel slow. You feel tired. And you start to questioning everything, right? And that's where the relax and strict tapering start to play, because you have your plan. And we're going to give you a plan. 10%, 20%, 30%, you're right. You are in week two of that three week taper. And you have two options, like you're feeling great, or you are feeling like shit. Either way, you, you will try, or your mind will try to run more. Oh no, if I'm feeling like shit, it because I'm losing fitness. So I'm going to go back to my routine. And I'm feeling great. It's stupid that I don't take advantage of this of this fitness. So I'm going to, I should run more, I should run more. And that's where I relax tapers start to, to play, right? Because it's like, okay, I reduce my percent, my weeks, they might have 10%, and the next week is I should reduce the 20%, but I'm going to go only 10%. Oh, I'm going to go to do my long run again, because I'm feeling great. So you are like fooling yourself in my opinion, that's your tapering. Yeah. Because you are kind of doing it, but not really doing it. So the thing here is, with your psychological the effects of tapering, you are going to feel different, maybe great, maybe awful, just stick to it. Everyone goes through it. Yeah. Even at the elite level, if you follow some elite athletes and their interviews, they hate the taper often, and they feel like crap. But they have coaches who are putting a lot of time and investment into them, so they listen to them, and then they do well. And mindset coaches a lot of them, right? So talking about the psychological effects of taper, there's the street taper and relaxed taper. The relaxed taper is usually because runners listen to their sheet of mind during taper and change, change the plan. They don't stick to the plan. Exactly. So three week taper is the ideal for marathon runners. And a very interesting thing that you found was that it doesn't matter the length of your race, the same taper. Yeah, duration is the same. Like, basically, if you're training for a 5k or like a mile race, and your friend is training for marathon, your taper is going to be the same. Just because your training for marathon doesn't mean your taper should be longer. Yes. Or just because it's only a mile race or a 5k, doesn't mean your taper should only be a couple days. It's still recommended to be around that three week mark. And I think people tend to believe this because at the now a material level, if you are training for a 5k, you are training less than if you are training for a month. Right? But and so you feel that your your tables should be should be shorter. But elite runners that are running a running 13 minutes, 5k are training as much as you and I train for a month. Yeah. So that's why they also need a lot of taper. And also if you are training for a mile or a 5k, you are running way faster. Maybe you don't have the volume of a marathon runner, would you are training way faster and your body also needs more time to recover for that past places. But my point is that the guidelines we're going to give you right now apply to a mile, 5k, whatever distance you are training. Yeah. So grab a pen and paper or have your phone in hand and write this down. Just start here and I'm going to I'm going to tell you my experience with this. Three week taper, okay? The first week you're going to reduce your mileage 10%. Only 10%. And here's a very important number from your average weekly mileage of the last three, four weeks because it doesn't count if you are running 80 kilometer weeks, 80 kilometer weeks, 80 kilometer. And the last week because you want to make the most out of it and you run 100k a week and you start to taper from there, that doesn't count. You need to have like the average of your last three, four weeks and taper from that, that might make sense. Yeah, it makes sense. So the first week is 10%. So if you are running 100k weeks, that's a 90k a week the next week. How are you going to distribute these 10 kilometers in this case during all your weekly and long? Yeah, it doesn't need to be just the long run or skip a 10k run and you're done. Exactly. It's all through the week. All through the week you just reduce 10% all of your mileage. And it also applies to your speed session that we talk about. Your intensity is going to be the same but the duration of your speed session it's going to be less. Then the next week you go and reduce your mileage by 20% and here is a very very important point. 20% from the last week, not from the average. So that 20% is going to come from the 90k week, not the average of the previous four weeks. Exactly. And your last week, 20% again, just 20% plus all of your runs. Yeah, so that's 72k. Okay. Yeah, perfect. Won't do the math for miles because those videos aren't good at math. Thank you. And then you're going to go for your last week, 35% less from the 72k week, right? Yeah. That's 72 minus 25 or 75. Yeah. So sorry, I did the 35% already. So that, yeah. So if you go 72 times 0.35, you get 25. Oh, okay. Sorry. And then so you go 72 minus 25, which is 47. Okay. Yeah. So at the end of the tape review, if you see you're running less than 50% of your highlights, my highest mileage weight or your average that you started with, we started with 100 and then we finished in 47. Yeah, 47. So that's a lot. But that was a very strict and very smart way to keep running, to keep stressing your body, but at the same time giving him time to adapt and recover and be, as you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, less fatigue. And I think like I've met runners and I myself have felt like three weeks is too much of a taper, like I feel like I'll lose too much fitness, but 10% is not that much. Like going down by 10%, you're still, if you've gotten your volume of running up nice and high, 10% is like to do 90k instead of 100, you're still running a lot. Yeah. So really that first week is just a little bit less. You're just starting to introduce. Exactly. You're just starting to prepare your volume, answer those and introduce the taper. And it doesn't sound like it's pretty much a two week taper with that 10%. Yeah. And we should mention two because that 47 kilometers, that won't include the marathon. Yeah. Because then you're only running like 5k the week, you're not going to feel very good. So this wouldn't include your race that 47k. What we recommend and we tried is to start your taper on Sunday. Yeah. Right. If your race is on Sunday, you start your taper week the Sunday before. So your taper week is from Sunday to Saturday. Yeah. So you do your last longer run on the Saturday, ideally. And then you'd start Sunday. Exactly. You just switch that. If you are used to do your long runs on Saturday, you are good to go. Or if you are used to run your long runs on Sunday, you just switch that mileage to Saturday and start your final taper week on a Sunday to run from marathon on Sunday. I mean, you need to take a Friday off. I just realized two oranges on a Saturday. Oh yeah. So I mean, I need to do my 16 kilometers or whatever I end up doing on the Friday. Yeah. Maybe take a couple hours off that day so I can get my running. And Boston is on Monday. So yeah, it's easy for you. It's easier. Yeah. In this case. So that's if you, I think if you want to take one thing from this episode is this formula, three week taper, 10%, 20%, 35%, and a stay on your current ratio of speed versus easy, ideally 80, 20. Yeah. But for example, do you know, do you know you're presented right now of speed versus it's less than 20 for speed because I've been hesitant to add in tempos on Tuesday. So like K to J if I don't include the warm up and cool down, it's only eight kilometers of speed maybe. Oh, I'm on an 80 K week on an 80 K week. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at exactly the same boat. Yeah. Between 10 and 12% of my weekly mileage, it's fast right now because I haven't had a second session on Tuesday. Yeah. And I think like, I want to see how I do with just one speed session a week and then when I train for Chicago, I'll see if I can add in that second one. But I might just leave it and I might be a one speed a week runner, I think. Yeah. And you need to make work beautifully. Yeah. Right. So those are the two things you need to remember from these hour long apps. Yeah. Maintain your easy versus speed session ratio and start with a three week taper, 10, 20, 35%. And I'll add something in, don't speed up because your volume is going to come down. So you're going to be feeling a little bit better. Okay. So I feel like you could go to your usual interval session and because you're now doing, you know, step into something, kilometers a week instead of a hundred, you really like slam the intensity. Don't speed up because you feel better because that could just get you injured. Keep it. similar. I think that's a beautiful example or tape because I've been super guilty of this. Yeah. You could just start to feel awesome. And you just want to go. And if I'm running 27 kilometers long run, and next week I have a 21, it's like, well, you know, do I need to do it that slow? If I can go way faster, if I'm running 20%. Yeah. I think if you're nailing the tape or come race day, you should feel like, you know, a bowl that's caged in and the gate's ready to open and you're gonna burst out the gate. You just want to go. So if you feel like, I want to go, I want to do more stick to the plan. Don't do it because all that energy is going to come out on race day. You want to feel like a bowl and everything? Yeah. All crazy. That's about not feeling one week or two weeks before racing. Just don't go too fast like a bowl would do. Let the gate open and then stick to the blanket. We will talk about last week, marathon tips in a few weeks. Now, I'm going to give you a few interesting data of that study that we've been mentioning. Of those 158,000 marathon runners, only 16% did a strict three-week taper. That tells me that there's a huge potential to runners to improve. 80s, 68% of them did a relaxed taper. That's huge. Yeah. Right? Why is that? I think it's because of the psychological things because one, you don't have a plan. Two, if you have a plan and you start to feel great, you're going to mess it up somehow. You're going to run faster as you just mentioned. You're going to run more because you're feeling great. Only 16% of those people did a three-week strict. I found it really, really interesting. I think a lot of people just don't know. Like, when people come in to see me at work and they're sometimes they don't do any strength training or they run every run as hard as they could, often it's just because they don't know any better. Sometimes people just don't know that a taper should be three weeks and it should reduce by 10, 20, 35 and intensity should stay the same. Like, you can't practice what you don't know. Exactly. And that's the whole point to doing the podcast is to get this info out in the ears of as many runners as possible. Absolutely. And I'm going to give you another two interesting pieces of data. A two-week strict taper worked better than a three-week relaxed taper. Interesting. So it doesn't matter if, oh, I'm going to do a three-week. If you don't stick to the plan, it's better to do a two-week. I personally do a two-week taper. If not, I feel like crazy. Just mentally, not running that much. So I do a two-week taper. And I'm reading this a few years ago, like, gave me confidence because, okay, maybe I'm not that crazy doing a two-week taper. If I'm doing it strict, instead of doing a three-week relaxed taper. Yeah. Okay. And the other one that I found really, really interesting is that women are way better at sticking to their taper. Interesting. But I have a graph here. Let me, yeah, I'm going to show, I'm showing this graph. So at every level, women were like even 30% more street or more, they apply the taper in way better. The street taper and the length of the taper. So I don't know why, but women were way better at it. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. So what can you do with this? Right? How do you start applying this? First, make a plan. No exactly what your mileage is during the three weeks before your taper. Make the average and start testing with a three-week taper. If you don't feel really good, test that two-week taper. Or maybe a four-week taper if you are feeling very different. You wrote here. If you're feeling flat on race day, maybe a shorter tapering works. Yeah. If you're feeling very tired or fatigued on race day, maybe a little longer works. Yeah. And it's different for everyone. Yeah. Yeah. But for me, I tried it in the past two marathons. I need work. I had one of my two best marathons. Yeah. Two attempts. Nope. So you want me to give the example of what I did. Let's see. Maybe we could take a screenshot and post it on the Instagram and the Facebook page so people could see exactly how you did the math and what you did. And we'll give them a good example. Okay. Yeah. I'm just going to give the numbers super busy, but how I planned it, right? I was average for the misses. No, I don't know. The marine coral marathon last week, 70 kilometers per week. So 20 percent less. It was 50 percent. 56 kilometers, sorry. Yeah. And 35 percent less of those 56 kilometers was 36 kilometers. Yeah. Then I calculated what I needed to do each day of the week to hit those 56 and to hit those 36. It wasn't everything was planned. I knew exactly what I needed to do each day of the week. Finally, let's finish with a shakeout room. Because I think if tapering has a lot of different answers to shakeout room more. Yeah. Right. What do you think about shakeout room? I don't know what works for me yet. So I feel like it's an individual thing and you have to figure out and test it. So a shakeout run is basically running the day before your race. I think if somebody's very anxious and has a lot of like nerves and just very worried about the next day or it just feels really cooped up a three to five K really easy relax shakeout run maybe with a couple strides at the end would be okay. But then others are like I want to rest my legs. I want to rest my legs as much as I can. So I've done both. I've like not run for two days. So before my Boston half marathon, I didn't run for two days. The day before my half, I sat on my butt in a car for seven hours and I peered the next day. I did the 20 minute five K at the cookie run and I did a little shakeout run the day before. Both races went well. It's hard to say. I think you have to have the experience and try a bunch of like try doing it, try not doing it. But if you're someone who has a lot of race anxiety, I think definitely a shakeout run can help the day before. Yeah. I feel the same way. I love shakeout runs. But I think if you if you haven't figured it out, if you haven't even think about it. Because that's part of what we're talking about. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. It's you ask yourself two things. One, how do you feel after a day off? I know I start my runs or my training after a day off. Really slow and tired. So for example, we do track on Thursdays. I don't run on Saturday on Friday. Sorry. And I do a run on Sunday and Saturday. I know the beginning of that run is going to feel tiring, sluggish. And after a few minutes, I'm going to get into the rhythm. So if I don't run a day, the next day, I can run great. But it starts difficult. And I don't want to feel that way during a race. I want to feel awesome from the get go. Right. So that's one of the main reasons I like to do shakeout runs. And as you just mentioned, it's a 5k easy run with three fourth tries at the end just to have some speed in my legs. Yeah. Yeah. And the other question you can ask yourself is how is it part of your tapering, right? Yeah. In my example, that I mentioned that the way before the marine course marathon, I did 36 kilometers. Is that 5k the day before part of those 36 kilometers or not? Yeah. You need to do the math and make sure it's included or not. But make sure you have the right plan. And as you mentioned, if you're, in fact, traveling the day before, maybe I won't have time to do that shakeout run. So those 36 kilometers in my case needed to be done. Sorry. Before. So if how do you feel after a day off? And if it's part of your paper plan, right? Yeah. Start from there. Let's finish this episode with when not a taper. What are you talking about? What? We just talk for an hour about the taper and how important it is. But sometimes you don't tell me that maybe I can't show them taper. Yes. When are they when when it's not ideal year? You can't. Yeah. Sometimes. So one of the most common reasons not to taper is if you're training through a race. So say you've got a marathon and four weeks before your marathon, you're going to race a half marathon. But the half marathon is a is a tune up race for your full marathon. You probably are not going to taper for that half because by the time you taper for three weeks, do the half recover from the half. You've just lost a month of training. Yeah. So you don't taper for that. Maybe you do like a little baby taper like the couple weeks before or the couple days before. If you were to do a regular like Thursday would be hard interval session, you just do some strides in an easy run that day because you're racing Saturday or Sunday or move it to Tuesday. Yeah, exactly. So you might do some different things like in the few days leading up to it, but really it's called training through a race So then you race and if you do really well, you know you could have done better because there's a three percent advantage You didn't get because it wasn't your a race. Yeah, it's not your a race So then you go do the marathon four weeks later and you you do taper for that So that's one example if it's just not your a race and you're gonna train through a race on the way to your main race And I'm sorry, I think it's a it's an error a lot of people do that they don't want to taper for everything because I'm training for a marathon And I'm doing a health marathon on a 5k four weeks before and I want to be on that one. Yeah, you can't what does it say can't have your cake You needed to which one is your a race? Yeah, they can't both be your a race. Yeah, it's because one is gonna compromise the other exactly Yeah, so you have to pick like when people have two races close The first thing is a which one's more important which one are we making your a race and sometimes it's the first one So then we're tapering for the first race like the half Yeah, and then recovering properly for it and then building up again for the fall and then maybe you don't do a three-week taper because you've just Tapered for the half marathon Another reason you wouldn't taper like sometimes I I'll do up training play programs for patients and They get injured or they go down south and they or as something happens they move and they're like oh for like two weeks I've hardly run and the race is in four weeks The taper is meant to reduce accumulated fatigue. So your Performance and fitness can shine through on race day if you don't have a lot of accumulated fatigue because you've been injured Sometimes you don't need that three-week taper. So sometimes you don't need a taper at all or sometimes it can just be shorter So if somebody's only gotten up to 24 kilometers for a marathon and they're like a home three weeks out and was supposed to taper But it's because they were injured recently and we had to pull back They would probably perform better if they did like 26 and then 28 and then did a short taper as opposed to like nope You're three weeks out you have to taper because they're accumulated fatigue is not that high because they're only at 24 kilometers Yes, so it makes total sense. Yeah, so those are two good examples of when not to taper. Yeah, I'm just gonna give you There's this Ironman champion called Craig Alexander And I heard an interview a few years ago with him He was like a late comer to the Ironman world. He wasn't a guy that started in his teens or in his 20s. He started like I don't know if late 20s or early 30s When I when he thought I can be an Ironman champion and I want to be an Ironman champion So he trained like for two years constantly racing without tapering for any race Because his a race was two years later, right? So Obviously, that compromised his races, right? He wasn't performing at his best at those During those two years, but it wasn't his his goal He just wanted to be an Ironman champion and the first goal was to qualify for the championship and the second one was to Winnie, so when he went to Kona He tapered and he did everything properly, but for two years he was like I want to build my fitness as As fast as I can and the truth is if you taper For example, if you have the 12 months of training If you taper two times because you have two races and if I don't taper for a full 12 months I'm going to be more fit at the end of the 12 months Maybe you beat me or you run faster your races during the year But at the end of the year, I'm going to be fitter because I didn't lose six weeks of training because of tapering So where is your Where is your mindset? Where where when is your goal? Where where's everything right for example this year I'm tapering two weeks for Boston that I'm tapering two weeks for Chicago, and I'm not tapering at all for New York Yeah, that makes sense because you just there's not enough time Just four weeks after Chicago. I just want to recover and keep running keep running keep running and And Chicago's going to be a huge high volume run for you. So that's kind of part of your training for New York Like you need to recover from that and come down from that. Yeah, yeah, so sometimes it makes sense even if we mentioned tapering for one hour Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, anything else you want to The only other thing I just very quickly is tapering strengths So that's the only hopefully your strength training because if you're listening to this podcast We talk about it all the time. So if you're strength training and you've been doing two sessions a week You can go down to once a week. There's not really a lot of strength Unexactly when that should happen. I usually tell my runners do it when you start to find it hard to fit in So usually it'll often be when you're approaching your peak mileage weeks like maybe four five six K out from race day Because you can actually switch to once a week once a week will maintain strengths twice a week helps build strength We've talked about that before. So if you switched to once a week say six weeks out You'll be just as strong race day as if you had done two Because the two times a week is probably too much to fit in with everything else. You're not going to recover enough You're going to get tired so you can switch to once and it's not a really good time to be ramping up wait and trying new things Okay, just kind of stick with what you've been doing keep the weight the same I wouldn't do I usually don't strength train it at all the week of the race Yeah, like if you do Tuesday Thursday strength in your race day Sunday Some people are like I'm just going to do a Tuesday. It's like why though like you're not going to get stronger Okay, you're not going to lose strength not doing one Session and you're not going to get stronger doing one. So why I just don't see the point. Okay. Yeah, so Just start doing less or maybe If I think about it, you are tapering your strength training right now. Yeah, because you went for four to four a minute sessions away To 20 minutes sessions away. Yeah, and I'm probably going to go to one next Exactly, then as for four weeks or so you've been tapering your training and the week before you are not going to Yeah, and some people feel better again everything. There's no cookie cutter solution everybody's different But some people feel better strength training twice a week like if they've got little niggles and injuries They're dealing with they find it better if they do twice That's okay, but you could do what I did last week just shorten it. Yeah, yeah, keeping keeping with your teen is very important We just mentioned it. Yeah, like 20 minutes tops. That would be plenty perfect. So there you there you have it If you have any questions, you know the Facebook group our website chasing prs.run. We're happy to Go deeper or answer whatever question you have all these episodes Let's go to the runner of the week Alex Roca. He's a 32-year-old's panier From Barcelona. That's where my grandfather is from Have you been nervous? Yeah, I like you more Well, he's a 32's panier with cerebral palsy. Yep cerebral palsy And he became the first athlete with 76 percent disability to complete a Marth. We were just mentioning how did they calculated that 76 percent? I don't know. Yeah, but either way It's impressive because he has very reduced mobility in his left side and he communicates through sign language So he he's not even even taught because often cerebral palsy is often like when when you meet someone who's elderly and they've had a stroke Okay, and the left side of the brain has been affected by the stroke the right side of the body We'll show the effects like they might not be able to use the right arm. They might drag the right foot cerebral palsy is very much like that. It just often usually happens in the womb or like during birth. So he had it like two months in Like these like sexual disease Oh, I I got I hired for you. So it happened after after he was born interesting. Okay, so you have he has reduced mobility on the left side Then it would be there's some sort of brain injury to the right side of his brain So imagine trying to run like we're also focused on symmetry as runners. He would have no symmetry at all Herpes, that's what I call really yeah Code by herpic viral in cephalitis at six months old well But he ran the Barcelona marathon in five hours and fifty eight minutes Naturally pressed. Yeah, he he runs with his like straunt later and He wants to start the foundation just to encourage people with disabilities to run and accomplish their life Because he I was reading an interview and it's like He's an accountant. He has a partner. He has a car Like he has a encodes normal life, and I in theory He wouldn't be able to do it. So he wants to inspire more people He was he was the cover of runners world in Spain. Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, and he's done a two thirty eight half which is also impressive. Yeah Amazing, I know a lot of people that can't do a two or thirty eight half and they don't have cerebral. Yeah It just not matter of wanting to do it. Yeah, that's amazing. And we have two runners of the week. It was really hard to big one this week and I'm gonna say this name. It's the first name I can say better than you 20 something episode is because he's Italian and 90 year old Cole Antonio Rao He broke the marathon world record for 90 plus. It was a marathon record since 2005. No one has broke And I'm assuming the person that broke it probably isn't with us anymore. No, he died in 2007 2007 Wow, so two years before he passed away broke record. Yeah, okay But it wasn't been broken since 2005 and he ran a marathon in six hour and 14 minutes the wrong marathon At 90 plus he just turned 90. I wonder when he started running in his teens and his team Okay, he's been running his whole life. We we mentioned these are like a lot of the runners of the week and people We have mentioned with a huge accomplishment started running at 40 50, but now he started running in his teens So yeah, and he broke the record by 30 minutes. That's a lot. That's amazing So there you have it the two runners of the week This week Alex Rocca and Antonio Rao from Italy and Spain So anything else you want to add about tapering amazing accomplishments like this before we Yeah, I think we've covered it all if you have any questions You know where to find us on the Facebook group Instagram and we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit more so we're covering the taper because a lot of people are entering the Taper, but then we're gonna do an episode on just kneeling down race strategy and tips for race day and Like the week before we're gonna talk about volume or anything just mentally and how to prepare for a way Combined we should calculate how many races we've done between the two of us, but we've done a lot Yeah, so we'll not that we're experts at race day and strategy with a lot of runners Yeah, yeah, so we'll give you our best tips. See you next week Thank you for listening to this episode if you love it give it a share Please consider subscribing to the show and leaving a rating and review on iTunes or Spotify and visit chasingprs.run For all the latest episodes get our free newsletter and all the cool running stuff we have there. Thanks for joining