Changes

The consensus of 27 studies<ref name="Effects of Tapering on Performance: A Meta-Analysis"/> for tapering is listed below. These guidelines are based on studies of relatively short distances, and I found no studies looking at marathon distance or greater. The sections below look at each point in a little more detail, but for more depth, see [[The Science of Tapering 101]].

The long run is a key aspect of endurance training, and vital for marathon and longer races. There are two suppositions that typically influence the timing of your last long run. One is the suppositions supposition that the benefit of a long run is not realized until about 3 weeks afterward, so any [[Long Run|long runs ]] performed within 3 weeks of the race will produce their benefit in subsequent races. However, there is little science to back up this idea. The other supposition is that a long run causes muscular damage that takes about three weeks to heal. Given the lack of scientific evidence, the following guidelines can be used.

* If you your long run has no noticeable impact, then you could do your last long run about 7-14 days before the race. However, this may be an indication that your long runs are not hard enough to produce [[Endurance Adaptations|endurance adaptations]]. Note that soreness is pain in the muscle either on usage or pain when pressing on the muscle, where fatigue is weakness and inability to produce force. So if you walk down stairs and your muscles cause you pain, that would be soreness, but if your muscles are weak and you have to support yourself, that's fatigue. 

* Avoid hard [[Downhill Running|downhill running ]] in the taper

* Do 'easy intervals' - for instance, mile repeats at tempo pace with full recovery. The idea is to be fast enough to keep prevent detraining, but easy enough to avoid any [[Muscle|muscle ]] soreness. You could do harder intervals if you are confident they will not cause soreness.

For a short race (5K), a study <ref name="The effects of taper on performance in distance runners"/> showed that drastically reducing training volume, while keeping intensity high can produce great gains. A 7 day taper that reduces mileage by 85% and has a decreasing number of hard intervals (7 the first day, 6 the next, etc.) produces good results. However, this type of taper tends to cause muscle soreness, which makes it less than ideal for longer races.

Tapering has some strange and unexpected effects. You would think that lowering your training would leave you feeling great, with boundless energy and enthusiasm. For most people, the opposite is true. We feel sluggish, lethargic and slow. New aches and pains suddenly appear and we can feel like a simple walk is hard work. This can lead to fear that our fitness has disappeared, or that we have a strange new illness. In reality, I suspect this is just the fact that our bodies are used to a higher level of training stress and the lower levels feel strange. It may also be higher levels of glycogen in the muscles which make our legs feel heavy. There is also the phenomenon that the shorter runs during the taper seem much harder than expected. This is probably because that a 5 mile run is easier than a 10 mile run, we expect it to be trivial, which it's not. Whatever the explanation, for most of us tapering is not the nirvana we would like. The term 'taper psychosisMain article: [[Taper Psychosis]]'' seems appropriate!

* [[The Science of Tapering 101]]

<ref name="Effects of Tapering on Performance: A Meta-Analysis">Effects of Tapering on Performance: A Meta-Analysis : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise [http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2007&issue=08000&article=00019&type=abstract</ref http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2007&issue=08000&article=00019&type=abstract</ref]>