Should you still train hard in the final weeks before a race, or start tapering?
Tapering means cutting back training just before a key event so the body can recover. Ease off in the last week or weeks and keep the work light.
In the final stretch before an important race, the usual answer is to stop adding hard training and start tapering. Tapering is the practice of reducing exercise in the days just before an important competition, and it is customary in endurance sports such as distance running and swimming as well as strength sports such as weightlifting and sprinting. For many athletes, a significant tapering period is considered essential for performing at their best. The hard work that makes you fitter has mostly been banked by then. What is left is letting the fatigue it created clear away.
What does a taper actually do?
Training makes you fitter, but it also makes you tired, and on any given morning your performance reflects both. Sports scientists have formalised this idea in the fitness-fatigue model, which describes performance as the sum of a positive fitness component and a negative fatigue component, each fading after a training stimulus. A taper is a deliberate attempt to let the fatigue side shrink faster than the fitness side.
There is also a biochemical story. A review of fifty studies on tapering indicates that optimal levels of muscle glycogen, enzymes, antioxidants and hormones, which are significantly depleted by intense endurance training, are reached during a taper. In plain terms, the fuel tanks refill and the systems that hard training has been drawing on get a chance to catch up.
The theory of supercompensation describes a similar arc for single workouts. After training, fitness first drops, then recovers to its starting level during a recovery period, and then rises above that level in a supercompensation phase before slowly declining again if no new training follows. The idea was first proposed by the Russian scientist Nikolai Yakovlev between 1949 and 1959. A taper can be read as an attempt to line that rising phase up with race day.
How long should a taper last?
The tapering period frequently lasts a week or more. As a rule of thumb, longer endurance events are preceded by longer tapers, with the curious exception of very long competitions such as ultramarathons and multiday races. Tapering for relatively short endurance events can take a week or less, while tapering for a marathon takes at least two or three weeks.
Swimming is described as working the other way round: distance swimmers often taper for only a week or less, while strength athletes taper for up to three weeks. The lesson is that there is no single correct length. The event, the sport and your own history all matter, and coaches often use smaller, lower-priority races to test how long a taper suits a particular athlete.
Where does the taper fit in a training plan?
In periodised training, a macrocycle is a whole season of training aimed at peaking for the year's goal competition, and it is split into preparation, competitive and transition phases. The competitive phase ends with the taper and the competition itself. Practice races during that phase can be used to test details such as pre-race meals, new gear, race tactics and the length needed for the taper.
Not every event deserves a full taper. When a lead-up competition is a higher priority there is a definite taper stage, while a lower-priority race might simply be absorbed into training. That is a useful filter for everyday athletes too. A local parkrun or a club time trial usually does not need you to cut a week of training. Your target marathon does.
What comes right before the taper?
Often, a workout that simulates the race distance and conditions is the high point of training immediately before the taper begins. The two-time American Olympian Pete Pfitzinger puts it simply: the taper should be preceded by the last long run.
That final big session does two jobs. It confirms that your fitness and pacing are where they need to be, and it marks a clear line in the calendar. After it, the goal shifts from building to sharpening and resting. Trying to squeeze in one more long or hard session after that line is one of the most common ways people arrive at the start tired.
How should training feel during a taper?
Tapering means gradually reducing training over a short period, and in some cases stopping completely just before the competition. Many athletes find the first days strange. Legs can feel heavy or restless, and it is tempting to read that as lost fitness. It usually is not. You are simply not used to having spare energy.
A practical approach is to keep the rhythm of your week while shrinking the size of each session. Runs get shorter, rides get easier, and any faster efforts become brief reminders of race pace rather than hard workouts. Sleep, food and calm become the main training tools. The point is to arrive at the start line feeling eager rather than flat.
Using your recovery score during a taper
The taper is one of the times when a recovery score is most useful, because the whole aim of these days is to recover. If the plan is working, your overnight heart rate, heart rate variability and sleep should generally look settled or improving as the race approaches.
If your score stays low in the final week, take it seriously. A persistently high resting heart rate after adequate rest, reduced heart rate variability and sleep problems are listed among possible signs of overtraining. Overtraining happens when a person exceeds their body's ability to recover from strenuous exercise, and it can bring a drop in performance rather than the boost you want. The recommended response is to allow the body enough time to recover, including reducing training volume or intensity and increasing sleep.
In practice, a low score during a taper is a reason to cut the session shorter or swap it for rest, not to add a hard workout to "check" your fitness. Fitness built over months does not disappear in a few easy days. Fatigue, on the other hand, can still be cleared.
Common taper mistakes
The most frequent mistake is not tapering at all and treating the last week like any other. The second is doing a hard test session late to reassure yourself, which only adds fatigue. A third is changing many things at once, such as new shoes, new food or a new routine, when the competitive phase was meant for testing those details earlier.
A short safety note
Tapering is about reducing load, so it is gentle by nature, but listen to your body throughout. If you feel unwell, have a fever, or notice pain that changes how you move, see a doctor or physiotherapist before racing. Your recovery score is general information to guide your training, not a medical assessment, and no race is worth starting while ill.
This article is general health information and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis or treatment. Consult a healthcare professional if you have concerns.