If you've found this article, there's a good chance you're sitting at home with a race on the calendar, a slightly elevated heart rate, and seventeen browser tabs open. That's normal. Race week is the strangest week in a runner's training cycle — the work is done, the job left is to deliver, and your brain decides this is the right time to question everything.
This guide walks you through the final seven days with the bias of a coach who has seen hundreds of athletes go through this. The headline message is simple: you cannot get fitter this week, but you can absolutely arrive less ready than you already are. Most race-week mistakes are mistakes of adding — adding miles, adding intensity, adding new foods, adding caffeine, adding worry. Your job this week is to subtract.
The taper paradox: doing less to perform more
Tapering feels wrong because it is counter-intuitive. After months of progressive overload, you suddenly cut volume, and your body responds by feeling worse before it feels better. There is good physiology behind this.
- Glycogen restoration. With reduced training, your muscles refill their carbohydrate stores. The bulk of this happens in the final 24–48 hours, but the runway begins on Monday.
- Muscle repair. Every hard week leaves microscopic damage in your muscle fibres. Reducing load lets the repair process catch up so race day starts on fresh tissue, not patched-up tissue.
- Nervous system freshness. Heavy training depresses neuromuscular drive — the speed and force with which your brain can recruit muscle fibres. A taper restores that snap. This is why taper-week strides feel so good.
- Hormone normalisation. Cortisol drops, testosterone and growth hormone recover, sleep quality (eventually) improves. None of this is dramatic, all of it matters.
The research consensus is clean: a well-executed taper improves race performance by roughly 1–3% over a flat lead-in. For a 4-hour marathoner, that's two to seven minutes. Don't throw it away by panicking on Wednesday.
Day-by-day breakdown
The plan below assumes a Sunday race. Shift accordingly. Paces are described relative to your training: "easy" means conversational, "race pace" means the goal pace you've trained at, "strides" means 15–20 second pickups at roughly 5K effort with full recovery between.
Day 7 — Sunday (race day minus 7)
This is your last "real" workout day, but the meaning of "real" depends on the race.
- Marathon: 8–12K with the middle 3–5K at marathon pace. Not a session — a rehearsal of feel.
- Half marathon: 6–8K easy with 4–6 strides at the end.
- 10K or 5K: an easy run with strides, or a very short tempo (10–15 minutes).
Eat: normal. Nothing changes yet. Think about: logistics — kit list, race-morning timing, travel. Get the spreadsheet stuff done early so it doesn't crowd your head later. Don't: add a long run because you "feel like you should." If you didn't do a 32K two weekends ago, you're not doing one now.
Day 6 — Monday
A short, easy run. 30–45 minutes, conversational. If you trained six days a week through the build, run easy. If you trained four, rest.
Eat: normal. Think about: the week. Protect Friday and Saturday from anything that will sap energy. Don't: test new shoes, new gels, new socks, new anything.
Day 5 — Tuesday
The first "sharpening" workout. The point is to remind your nervous system what fast feels like, not to add fitness.
- Marathon: 30–40 minutes easy + 4–6 strides, or 6 × 1 minute at 10K pace with 2 minutes easy between.
- Shorter races: 20–30 minutes easy + 3–4 × 2 minutes at race pace.
Eat: normal carbohydrate intake. Think about: which pacing strategy you're committing to. Read the Runpace pacing guide once and decide — even, negative, or positive splits — and stop revisiting that decision after Wednesday. Don't: make this workout hard. If you finish breathing through your nose, you did it right.
Day 4 — Wednesday
Easy run or rest day. 20–35 minutes maximum if you run. Add a short evening walk if you've got nervous energy to burn — walking helps digestion, sleep, and stress without costing you anything.
Eat: sip water steadily through the day. Think about: sleep. Bank an extra hour tonight and tomorrow. Don't: weigh yourself obsessively. Glycogen-loaded muscle holds about 3g of water per 1g of glycogen — you'll be 1–2 kg heavier on race morning than you were Monday. That's the point.
Day 3 — Thursday
A short shakeout: 20–25 minutes very easy with 4 × 20-second strides at the end. The strides are the active ingredient. They take three minutes total and they wake your legs up without taxing them.
Eat: if you're running a marathon, this is when carb loading starts in earnest. More on that below. Think about: your race-morning routine. Write it down. Don't: read race reviews on Reddit at 11pm.
Day 2 — Friday
Rest, or 20–30 minutes very easy if you cannot bear a full day off. Most runners do better with a light jog than full rest — the legs feel less stiff Saturday morning.
Eat: carbs at every meal for marathon distance. Continue normal eating for shorter races. Hydrate consistently, don't flood. Think about: packing. Lay out kit, pin numbers, charge watch, set two alarms. Don't: travel far on foot doing tourism if it's a destination race. Sit down.
Day 1 — Saturday
Two reasonable choices:
- Pre-race shakeout: 15–20 minutes very easy + 3–4 short strides. This is what most experienced runners do. It calms the nervous system and confirms the legs work.
- Full rest: also fine, especially if you slept badly Friday.
Eat: the standard advice is "nothing new." Eat a familiar dinner around 6–7pm — pasta, rice, bread, something you've eaten the night before long runs. Avoid heavy fats, very high fibre, and anything alcoholic. Think about: tomorrow morning's timeline backwards from gun time. Don't: stay up late watching weather forecasts.
Race day
Wake at least 3 hours before the start for a marathon, 2 hours for shorter races. Coffee if you train with it. Eat your familiar pre-race breakfast (oatmeal, toast with honey, banana, bagel — whatever has worked in training). Get to the start early enough that the bathroom queue isn't the most stressful part of your morning. Warm up appropriately for the distance: 10–15 minutes plus strides for a 5K, 5–10 minutes plus strides for a 10K, light jog and a few strides for the half, almost nothing for the marathon (the first 3K is your warmup).
The "phantom unfitness" feeling
Around Wednesday or Thursday, you'll go for a 25-minute easy run and your legs will feel slow, heavy, mistuned, possibly broken. You'll run 20 seconds per kilometre slower than usual at the same heart rate and conclude that your fitness has evaporated.
It hasn't. This is the most reliably reported sensation in the entire taper, and it has a name in coaching circles: phantom unfitness. It comes from the body still completing repair work, glycogen and water rebuilding in the muscles (heavy legs), and the absence of the daily neuromuscular stimulus you're used to. The strides on Tuesday and Thursday partly counteract it — which is why we do them.
The single biggest taper-week mistake is responding by adding a "confidence-builder" workout — a 5K time trial, a long progression run, an extra session. Do not. Trust the calendar. The race will arrive and the legs will be there.
Carb loading without the broscience
For a marathon, you want to start increasing carbohydrates roughly 72 hours out, with the biggest emphasis on the final 36 hours. Aim for around 7–10g of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day during the loading phase. For a 70kg runner, that's 490–700g of carbs per day — meaningfully more than a normal day, but not a Roman feast. Keep protein moderate, drop fat and fibre slightly to make room and ease digestion.
Good sources are the boring ones: white rice, pasta, bread, oatmeal, potatoes, bananas, honey, jam, sports drinks, fruit juice. Favour easy-digesting carbs over high-fibre options the day before — save the lentils and bran for Monday next week.
For races shorter than a marathon, aggressive carb loading is unnecessary. Add an extra carb-rich meal in the 24–48 hours pre-race for half marathons and 10Ks; for 5Ks, eat normally and have a familiar dinner. Glycogen depletion is rarely the limiter under 90 minutes of racing.
A note on weight: you'll gain 1–2 kg during a marathon load. That's stored fuel and water bound to glycogen. Not fat, not a problem.
Sleep priority
Your most valuable sleep is Thursday and Friday, not the night before. Race-eve sleep is famously broken by adrenaline and a 4am alarm — almost no one sleeps brilliantly the night before a goal race, and almost no one needs to. The performance impact of one bad night's sleep is small if the previous nights were good.
Bank sleep early in the week. Get to bed an hour earlier than usual Tuesday through Thursday. Treat this as a non-negotiable training session.
Race morning logistics
- Eating: 2.5–3 hours before the gun for a marathon, 1.5–2 hours for shorter races. Aim for ~1g/kg of carbs at breakfast (a 70kg runner: ~70g — roughly two slices of toast with honey, a banana, and a cup of oats).
- Caffeine: if you train with it, take it 45–60 minutes before the start. If you don't, race day is not the day to start.
- Warmup: scale to the distance. Marathon — almost nothing, the first 3K is your warmup. Half — 5–10 minutes easy plus 2–3 strides. 10K — 10–15 minutes plus strides. 5K — 15–20 minutes plus strides, finishing within 5–10 minutes of the gun.
- Bathroom: be early. The portaloo queue ten minutes before the gun is the most expensive line in sport. Plan to be in line 45 minutes early, expect to go twice.
The mental side
Taper week is mostly a mental event. Three things help:
- Visualisation. Run the race in your head — the start, the early kilometres, the middle, the moment it gets hard. Picture how you respond. This is not woo; the evidence on motor imagery is good.
- Rehearse the plan. Know your splits. Know the climbs. Know where the aid stations are. Know what you'll drink and where.
- Ignore the weather forecast until 48 hours out. Weather models are not reliably accurate beyond two days, and obsessively refreshing the 10-day forecast will only generate anxiety about a number that will change. Check it on Friday. Adjust kit and pace expectations on Saturday. Move on.
Different distances need different tapers
The article above assumes a marathon-style 7-day window, but the right taper length scales with race distance:
| Distance | Taper length | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 5K | 2–3 days | Light final week; only the last 2–3 days are properly reduced. |
| 10K | 4–7 days | A genuine but short taper; sharp workouts up to Tuesday/Wednesday. |
| Half marathon | 7–10 days | The version above works well; volume drops from 10 days out. |
| Marathon | 2–3 weeks | This guide is the final 7 days of a longer taper that began two weeks earlier. |
If you've cut volume only in the last seven days for a marathon, you've under-tapered. Next cycle, start the reduction at the three-weeks-out mark and you'll arrive markedly fresher.
Lock the plan in, then stop deciding
The single best thing you can do this week is stop making decisions. Pick your pacing strategy. Pick your kit. Pick your breakfast. Write them down on Wednesday and don't revisit them. The race will reward execution, not improvisation.
If you haven't committed to a split strategy and a target time, lock in your pacing strategy at runpace.co — taper week is for committing to a plan, not improvising one. The runners who finish strong on Sunday are almost always the ones who decided on Tuesday.
Then sleep. Eat normally. Run easy. Trust the work.