How Science-Based Tapering Unlocks Race-Day Performance

Many athletes worry they'll lose fitness during a taper, but the research says otherwise!

In Part 1 of this two-part series, CTS Coaching Director Cliff Pittman breaks down what tapering actually does, why the final weeks before your race are about reducing fatigue, not building fitness, and the science behind the taper strategies that consistently produce the best results.

HOST

Cliff Pittman is the Coaching Development Director at CTS, leading the Ultrarunning and Cycling Coaching staff with a specialty in guiding athletes from first-time ultrarunners to elite competitors at races like Western States 100, Leadville 100, and the Triple Crown of 200s. A competitive trail and ultra athlete himself, Cliff brings firsthand experience and a rare ability to turn complex training science into simple, actionable coaching.

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Resources:

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12840640/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3156841/
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1559951/

Transcript

Why Skipping The Taper Risks DNF

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Not tapering won't just slow you down on race day. It can be the difference between a finish line and a DNF at the cutoff. Most of what you've heard about tapering is either oversimplified or overcomplicated. So today we're going to cover the actual research to find out what's true. I'm Cliff Pittman, Pro Ultra Running Coach and Director of Coaching at CTS. This is part one of a two-part series on tapering. Today we're covering what the science actually says. In the next video, we'll cover how to apply it, including the numbers I use with my own athletes, and how to avoid the psychological trap known as the taper

What A Taper Actually Does

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tantrum. Let's start with the most fundamental question. Why taper at all? Tapering is, at its core, a reduction in training load immediately before race. It's not entirely different from a normal recovery phase and heavy training, except this one precedes competition. Here's what most athletes get wrong about it. They don't misunderstand what a taper does. Most know it's not about gaining new fitness. What they get wrong is the value of it. Most athletes undervalue tapering because they're afraid of what it feels like. You cut your training back and your legs feel flat. Your confidence drops, and it feels like fitness slipping away in real time. So athletes shorten the taper or sneak in one more hard session that they don't need just to feel sharp again. Here's the problem with that instinct. You're not losing fitness in a taper. The research doesn't support that fear. What you're managing is fatigue sitting on top of your fitness that you've already built. And that flat feeling is not a sign you're detraining. And the benefit you're giving up by cutting a taper short isn't small. A properly built taper is worth more than most of the interventions that athletes spend money on and energy chasing. Compression boots, supplements, recovery gadgets, none of that comes close to the 2-3% performance gain that a well-executed taper delivers. To understand where that number comes from, you have to understand the time course of adaptation. When you do a hard workout, say a long run with significant vertical gain, or a structured threshold session, your body doesn't adapt to that session immediately. The adaptation happens over the days and weeks to follow as your body repairs and rebuilds in response to the stress you applied. That means the training you do two weeks before a race doesn't have time to fully convert into new fitness before you're standing on the start line. What it does contribute very reliably is fatigue. Here's the real picture. By the time you enter the final two to three weeks, the fitness building window has essentially closed. You have the fitness you're going to have. What's left to manage is fatigue, the accumulated residue of months of training that's sitting on top of that fitness and masking it. That reframes the entire goal of a taper. You're not trying to build anything new, you're trying to dissipate fatigue while holding on to the fitness you've already

The Research That Defines Tapering

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earned. Most of the foundational research on tapering comes from Anigo Mujika, widely regarded as the leading researcher in the space. Mujika and Padilla's 2003 paper in medicine and science and sports and exercise is the most cited and foundational work on tapering strategy. Everything we're covering today traces back to that body of research. Now let's talk about how to actually structure that fatigue reduction.

Four Taper Models Compared

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The research identifies four distinct tapering models. The first is a linear taper. Training load decreases in a straight line throughout the taper period. Simple and predictable, but it's not the model that research favors most. The second is a step taper. Training load drops all at once to a lower level, then holds steady at that reduced load for the rest of the taper. Very easy to execute, but it lacks the nuance that produces the strongest outcomes. The third and fourth are exponential models, a slow decay version, and a fast decay version. In a slow decay taper, training load decreases gradually, with the rate of reduction staying fairly consistent. In a fast decay taper, training load drops sharply at the very beginning, then the rate of reduction slows as race day gets closer. The biggest cuts happen early. The curve flattens out toward the end. The fast decay exponential model is the one the research consistently favors. If you remember nothing else about the taper models, remember this. Cut hard and fast at first, then taper that cut itself. Now let's talk about what the research says to actually reduce and what to

What To Cut And What To Keep

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protect. Volume is the primary lever. This is where the bulk of your load reduction happens, and it should follow the fast decay pattern, sharp reduction early, leveling off as the race approaches. Intensity is where it gets more nuanced, and this is one of the most important findings in the entire body of tapering research. You reduce the amount of intensity work. Fewer total minutes, fewer intervals, but you do not reduce the type of intensity. If threshold work has been part of your training, threshold work stays part of your taper, just less of it. If you've been doing hill repeats, keep doing hill repeats, just fewer of them. This matters because including a small amount of intensity during the taper prevents a decline in the fitness adaptations you worked months to build. Now this isn't speculation. Hickson and colleagues in 1985 and Shepley and colleagues in 1992 both found that maintaining the type of intensity during a period of reduced training volume prevented the detraining effect that volume reduction alone can cause. This is the actual mechanism that allows a taper to preserve fitness rather than quietly erode it. Drop the intensity type entirely, and you're not tapering anymore. You're actually detraining. Frequency should be maintained, or only slightly reduced. If you train five days a week, keep training five days a week and make each session smaller. Don't cut the number of sessions. If frequency needs to come down, then the research suggests no more than one day per week. And finally, environment and specificity. This should be maintained, not adjusted. If you've been training on trails, stay on trails. If you've been training on technical or mountainous terrain, don't switch to flat running just because you're tapering. Your body has spent months calibrating to the specific demands of your race. The taper is not the time to change that calibration.

The Real Performance Gain In Ultras

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So how much does all of this actually improve your performance? This is where most athletes' expectations are widely out of proportion with what the evidence actually shows. Ujika and Padilla found that a properly constructed taper improves performance by approximately 3%. That's a 3% compared to not tapering at all. So in an Olympic level 10K, that 3% could be the difference between a medal and missing the podium entirely. At that level of competition, seconds separate placings, so a small percentage carries enormous weight. In ultramarathon racing, we don't need to be nearly as precise to capture most of that benefit. A reasonable taper, not a perfectly optimized one, gets you most of the way there. Something closer to 1.5 to 2% from a solid, well-executed taper that isn't obsessively engineered. But here's where I want to push back on the idea that this number doesn't matter in ultrarunning. Think about a hundred-mile race with a 30-hour cutoff. If you're racing near the front of the field, a 3% improvement might be the difference between fourth place and a podium. That's meaningful, but it's not life or death. Now think about the back half of that same field. The athletes fighting the clock, running against A-Stutoffs, trying to make the final cutoff at the finish. A 3% improvement applied to a 30-hour effort is over 50 minutes. For an athlete who finishes with five minutes to spare before a cutoff, or who misses a cutoff by 10 minutes, that 3% is not a marginal gain. It's the difference between a finish and a DNF. It's the difference between a buckle and a six-hour drive home without one. So when I hear athletes dismiss tapering or something that doesn't matter much in ultras, I'd ask them to think about which race they're actually running. The value of that percentage scales with how close you are to the line that matters to you, whether that's a podium or a cutoff clock.

Individual Variation Plus Next Steps

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One more thing the research is honest about individual variation in response to tapering is real. And in ultrarunning, that variation appears to be even more pronounced than in the shorter, more heavily studied events this research originally came from. Some athletes feel very sharp and ready after a relatively short taper. Others need the full window to fully dissipate fatigue. The current research doesn't fully resolve why that variation exists or how to predict it in advance. This is an area where coaching judgment and individual monitoring matter just as much as the published studies. We'll go deeper on exactly that in the next video. Here's where this leaves us. The research is consistent on several key points. Tapering is about dissipating fatigue, not building the fitness. The fitness building window has already closed by the time you taper. What's left is managing what's sitting on top of it. A fast decay exponential model reproduces the best outcomes. So reduce volume substantially, reduce the amount of intensity work, but maintain the intensity type, maintain training frequency and terrain specificity. Expect a modest but real performance benefit, not a dramatic one. And depending on the race you're running, that modest benefit might matter more than you think. The taper does not make or break a well-built training cycle, but it can meaningfully detract from one if it's handled poorly. The taper is not where the race is won, it's where a well-built race can be lost. In the next video, we're going to get specific, the actual numbers I use with my athletes, how to know whether you need a longer or shorter taper, and how to avoid the taper tantrums that derail so many athletes in the final weeks before a big race. If you want to understand how heat acclimation timing intersects with your taper because it decays faster than most athletes realize, my heat training video covers that in detail. And if you want coaching that builds a taper specific to your race, your training history, and your physiology, visit trainwrite.com to connect with a CTS coach and subscribe for more coach driven, ultra running education.