What is a Taper and Why Should You Schedule a Taper Before Your Goal Race
You will often hear runners and other endurance athletes discuss a concept known as tapering for a race. What is a taper? Why is a taper important?
In non-athletic pursuits, a taper (as it relates to us) is defined as a gradual diminution of thickness, diameter, or width in an elongated object or as a gradual decrease. Applied to your training, a taper is decreasing the time, the training intensity, or the training volume in which you are engaged in the days or weeks leading up to a performance event. In other words, you would gradually ease up on your training leading up to a big race.
Why do you want to taper?
All performance athletes and most recreational athletes choose a specific race (or other endurance event) and then base their training on a peak performance at that race. Some may be more serious about their training than others, and may follow a schedule more loosely or strictly, but in general there is always the goal race. If you were to train to the best of your ability without regard to the race, then you may do quite well at the race but you would not be very likely to have a breakout performance. You would be too tired.
Instead, most training schedules bring in a taper before the race so that the body will have a chance to repair any damage to the muscles that your training has imparted, and to allow you to rest before the event so that you do not come to the starting line already fatigued.
Some of the benefits of a taper include:
- A reduced level of perceived exertion: You can run faster and longer with less energy and strain.
- Improved muscular economy: The amount of oxygen that your muscles require at a given intensity decreases, and your VO2 max (a measure of aerobic performance) can improve by as much as 8%.
- Improved glycogen storage: Your muscles can store more fuel than is possible during intense training, assuming that your diet provides that fuel.
- You will sleep better.
By including a taper into your schedule, you’ll be able to get more rest, you’ll have more fuel in your muscles on race day, you’ll be more efficient in fact, and you will feel more efficient once you’ve gotten in a good warm up.
It isn’t uncommon when you are tapering to feel phantom pains and illnesses, especially if you cut off too much mileage too quickly, but if you learn to ignore them and to get a good warm up before your race, you’ll find that you are actually perfectly prepared once the starting gun fires.
Blaine Moore is a running coach in Southern Maine with 20 years of training and racing experience, which he shares on his blog at http://news.RunToWin.com – If you would like to watch one of Blaine’s coaching session DVDs online for free, head over to: http://www.RunToWin.com/freesessions/