Into the tapering phase now

Weekly stats

The taper tantrums

I am now into the full blown paranoia phase before the Cape Wrath Ultra.

Otherwise known as tapering.

The pressure of getting out for longer runs is not there, I have more time which is novel, but the gap is being filled with my anxieties and insecurities.

Every time I get up from a chair I wonder if my back is about to go into spasm. Is that slight tickle in my throat the onset of another dose of Covid? My left calf feels tight, is it about to tear? My skin is too dry and now I’m sure my back will be horribly chafed within a day, forcing an ignominious exit.

In short, I’m now a hopeless bundle of hypochondria and fear.

Jason Koop has some interesting thoughts on tapering and talks, a wee bit tongue-in-cheek, about the taper tantrums. It is a recognition that the taper can fray the edges of your confidence and let all your demons run wild.

Koop on tapering

I have Koop’s excellent book on training for ultramarathons. (There is nothing on multi-day efforts - perhaps something he might add in a future edition.)

Much of the content of the tapering chapter can be found on his website: https://trainright.com/tapering-ultrarunning-prevent-taper-tantrum/

One thing worth mentioning about tapering is that the evidence suggests it doesn’t have an enormous impact - of the order of a few per cent. (And that’s compared to no taper at all.) It is unlikely a typical standard shorter race will be completely derailed by an inadequate taper. I suspect the evidence on the value of the taper is not particularly well covered in the literature - for ultras generally and it may well be lacking in the just-want-to-finish (JWTF) runners. (Most sports science research suffers from the lack of wider representation of age, gender, education etc. And JWTFs are not well covered either with elites getting a lot of the attention.)

Getting it wrong here could easily be associated with a much higher risk of a DNF. Koop certainly does not suggest missing it and in the run up to a multi-day effort like CWU it would be verging on insanity not to ensure one was fully rested before the start.

The taper is essential here.

Koop presents a very rough strategy for a 2-3 week taper.

It is based on a ‘fast decay exponential’ taper which really is at risk of sounding overly-complicated to the point of gibberish. Koop also recognises the basic ludicrousness of getting too detailed here. But, it does offer a strategy. Now, rather carelessly, I didn’t re-read this chapter of the book until a couple of days ago and it would have been much better to digest it three weeks ago…

If you have not started tapering yet then it’s definitely time! Forget about the long run this weekend and get your feet up.

Fast decay tapering: 50/30/20

The ‘fast decay’ method involves dropping your volume of normal training quickly at first then more slowly. The video above from TMR coaching covers the same ground:

• Week 1: 40-50% of usual volume
• Week 2: 20-30% of usual volume
• Week 3: <20 of usual volume

Koop also recommends a few other things:

• Try to keep the frequency the same and just reduce the volume. I normally run 5-6 times a week and I have kept doing that - it’s just my runs have been shorter.
• Stick with runs specific to the event and your training - no changes. They should be the same, just less of it.
• Ideally, some intensity will be maintained - again, with just less of it and no change in type.
• Don’t start doing new stuff!

As it happens, despite forgetting to check on the best taper strategy, I’ve fortunately fallen into a fast decay taper over about 2-3 weeks. I had been building towards a plan where I did several 100k weeks in a row as my final preparation. In the end I managed 100k/64k/100k in the past three weeks - life got in the way for the second week but it probably worked well to allow me some recovery time.

Following the taper plan

The week after that final short block of training I dropped to 46km for the week - which is, almost perfectly, around the 40-50% mark. Of course, I also felt like a right lazy bastard who was rapidly de-training. Which is, of course, nonsense.

I’m now in the second week of the taper and by Friday I had done just 24k. My big question was: How much should I run this weekend? This is the point I turned to the Koop book to check the specific advice on tapering.

So, I reckoned I should be aiming at about 30k maximum. I did my usual loop around my local fell and I was there. No run for me on the Sunday.

Next week then I shall aim to stick to around 20k. Three short runs on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and that will be it for me. Any less and I really will start to feel worse. I think it is reasonable to keep my legs turning over, if very gently.

Meanwhile, I’m going to turn my rising excitement/nerves towards the admin that needs to be done. It’s time to get the food plan sorted and start bagging it up.