Avoid Premature Marathon Peak with Proper Tapering

Inhale fully, drawing in as much air as possible, then pause. Picture the volume of air you retain as a metaphor for the conditioning built up through months of marathon preparation. Sooner or later you will have to release that breath. Your objective on race day is to step up to the start line while your lungs are still filled to their fullest, prior to any exhalation. Put simply, you aim to compete when your fitness is at its highest. If you reach peak condition too soon, you end up racing during the decline phase, meaning your top fitness has already passed.

That scenario is undesirable. Ideally, you should aim to hit peak form just before the marathon, allowing you to capitalize on every mile logged, which hinges on perfecting a key training component. Achieving that timing depends on executing the taper correctly. According to Jeff Gaudette, founder and head coach of RunnersConnect, an early peak results from commencing the taper prematurely or reducing volume excessively. Both scenarios can trigger a decline in fitness before race day arrives. “Of the two, tapering too aggressively is the more common mistake, and novice marathoners can be more susceptible to this,” he explains.

How to Prevent Peaking Too Early

“You miss the window of your highest fitness level and you toe the starting line with your fitness already on the downswing. But that also doesn’t mean you should err on the side of undertapering; you just need to ensure your drops in volume and intensity happen at the right times and in the right amounts,” says Janet Hamilton, CSCS, an exercise physiologist and the founder and head coach of Running Strong. “The taper will be unique to each athlete, but a good rule of thumb is to start the process about three weeks out from race day.” Hamilton emphasizes that the taper can take a bit of trial and error over a few training cycles to determine your ideal protocol.

Some of Hamilton’s athletes have learned they race better on a shorter taper, while others do better with a longer one. Many runners will hit their highest volume of training—or close to it—before beginning their taper about three weeks before race day. This is your peak week, explains Hamilton. The week after your peak, you’ll start slightly decreasing the distance of each of your weekly runs, as well as your long run. “Trim about 20 percent from your long run, but make sure you maintain some intensity throughout the week,” says Hamilton. “You don’t want to cut out speed entirely.” She suggests keeping one or two runs in your training week that include efforts at your marathon goal pace.

With one week left before race week, you’ll cut another 20 to 25 percent of your long-run distance and drop a few more midweek miles, but you’ll still do some running at goal marathon pace. The week of the race, Hamilton tells her athletes to pull the plug on their strength training and add in an extra recovery day. According to Hamilton, a relatively novice marathoner’s long-run taper could be: 20 to 22 miles three weeks out, 16 miles at two weeks out, then 10 to 12 miles the weekend before running 26.2 miles on race day.

By gradually decreasing mileage and intensity, but still maintaining a modest training stimulus, you’ll be able to recover enough to feel fresh and ready to race hard. This means you won’t lose any fitness, and it’s less likely you’ll feel stale or lethargic. “You want to toe the line on race day at the sweet spot where you’re fully refreshed and adequately rested, but your body hasn’t yet started to de-adapt,” Hamilton says. “That can leave your legs feeling just a little bit dead and not ready for the task at hand.”

Signs That You’re Peaking Too Early

It can be hard to distinguish between typical taper fatigue and the symptoms of peaking too early, says Gaudette. “Generally speaking, you’re going to feel lethargic when you’ve overtapered,” Gaudette explains. “During your runs, even your easy runs, you’re going to feel like you don’t have any energy.” The frustrating part is that some runners may also feel that way even when they’ve tapered correctly, he adds.

Sometimes those feelings of unusual tiredness are simply the result of a change in your established running routine and training load. But overall, Gaudette says that your fatigue will feel much more dramatic if you’ve peaked too early before your marathon. “When you first start a run during your taper, you may feel a little lethargic, but it goes away.

Whereas, if you’ve overtapered, you might feel lethargic the whole run or even the whole day,” he explains. If that happens, it can mean you’ll head into race day feeling flat, unless you make some tweaks to your training. Don’t panic. You have a few tools at your disposal if you suspect you may have peaked a bit too soon. “It can be a little challenging for runners to adjust on the fly,” says Gaudette, “because you don’t want to do anything too drastic.” The key is to add a bit more mileage and intensity, without overdoing it.

Adjusting When You Suspect Overtapering

If a runner believes they have peaked too early, Gaudette advises against drastic changes. Instead, he suggests a targeted workout about a week before the race. The session begins with two miles at a pace slightly faster than goal marathon pace, followed by a three-minute recovery. This is succeeded by two repetitions of three minutes at roughly mile pace, each with three minutes of rest. The sequence concludes with two 60-second efforts at mile pace, each separated by 90 seconds of easy jogging.