How long should a marathon taper be?

Two to three weeks. Three suits higher-mileage runners and anyone over 40; two is often enough for lower-volume training.

Should I stop running completely before a race?

No. Complete rest for more than a day or two leaves most runners feeling flat. Keep running, just much less, with some intensity retained.

Why do I feel terrible during the taper?

It is the standard experience. Reduced training volume changes how your body feels before the freshness arrives. It usually resolves two to three days out. It is not a sign that the training has failed.

Can I taper too much?

Yes, though it is less common than tapering too little. More than about three weeks of substantially reduced training starts costing fitness, and dropping intensity entirely is the more frequent version of the same mistake.

Guide

How to taper

The taper is where months of work get converted into a race performance, and it is the phase most runners get wrong in the same two ways: cutting too little, or cutting the wrong thing.

What a taper does

Training makes you fitter and more tired at the same time. Your performance on any given day is roughly what your fitness allows minus what your fatigue takes away. Fitness is built slowly and decays slowly; fatigue accumulates quickly and clears quickly.

A taper exploits that difference. By cutting volume sharply for two to three weeks you shed most of the accumulated fatigue while losing very little fitness, and the gap between the two opens up. The research on this is unusually consistent: a well-executed taper is worth in the region of two to three percent, which over a marathon is several minutes.

How long, by distance

Race	Taper length	Volume reduction
5K	5 to 7 days	30 to 40 percent
10K	7 to 10 days	35 to 45 percent
Half marathon	10 to 14 days	40 to 50 percent
Marathon	2 to 3 weeks	40 to 60 percent by race week

A three week marathon taper

1
Three weeks out
Last long run, 18 to 20 miles. Weekly volume roughly 80 percent of peak. Keep both quality sessions but shorten them.
2
Two weeks out
Volume down to about 60 percent of peak. Long run 12 to 13 miles. One quality session, with 4 to 6 miles at marathon pace. This is usually the week you feel worst.
3
Race week
Volume down to about 40 percent. Long run 8 miles early in the week. One short session on Tuesday or Wednesday: 3 x 1 mile at marathon pace, or a 20 minute run with 6 x 1 minute at race pace. Two easy days or one rest day before the race.
4
The day before
20 to 30 minutes very easy with 4 x 20 second strides, or nothing at all. Both are fine. Do not test your fitness.

Why you will feel awful

Almost everyone feels heavy, sluggish and slightly unwell during the middle week of a taper. Legs feel dead, easy pace feels hard, and phantom niggles appear in places that were fine a week ago.

This is normal and it is not a signal. Your body is repairing rather than coping, and the sensation of that is not the same as the sensation of being fit. It usually lifts two or three days before the race. Runners who panic here and add a hard session undo the entire taper.

Frequently asked

How long should a marathon taper be?: Two to three weeks. Three suits higher-mileage runners and anyone over 40; two is often enough for lower-volume training.
Should I stop running completely before a race?: No. Complete rest for more than a day or two leaves most runners feeling flat. Keep running, just much less, with some intensity retained.
Why do I feel terrible during the taper?: It is the standard experience. Reduced training volume changes how your body feels before the freshness arrives. It usually resolves two to three days out. It is not a sign that the training has failed.
Can I taper too much?: Yes, though it is less common than tapering too little. More than about three weeks of substantially reduced training starts costing fitness, and dropping intensity entirely is the more frequent version of the same mistake.

Stop reading. Start training.

This is the theory. Shed is the schedule.

Knowing what a threshold run is for does not tell you which Tuesday to run one, or how fast, or what to do when you miss it. Shed writes every session of your race block and adjusts it as you train. Ask it where a number came from and it will tell you.

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