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Craig Alexander is a 5x Triathlon World Champion and 12x Australian Champion. He is a husband to Neri and a dad to Lucy, Austin, and Lani. Craig is an ambassador for the Kids Foundation and The Safeheart Foundation and also founded an online endurance training platform, Sansego.

When tapering for a race, there isn’t some one-size-fits-all formula, but there are some good general rules to help guide us overall. From there, you can focus on more individual preferences and methods (often devised through trial and error) that you can employ to refine your own race-week taper.

 

For me, the overriding principle around tapering is to replenish during race week, not deplete. When in doubt, I always default to this mindset. There are no real fitness or strength gains to be made in the last week or so that come without a cost and result in fatigue or soreness that will negatively impact our race performance.

The goal of a taper is to:

• Freshen up physically and mentally – rid our bodies of any residual or accumulated fatigue

 

• Sharpen up – emphasize fast and fluent functional movements

 

• Feel strong – maintain and activate our muscles

How to Build a Taper

A taper is influenced by an athlete's normal training workload or volume, their level of experience or base conditioning, the distance of the event they are tapering for, and their age. An athlete maintaining a training load of 30 hours per week will taper differently than an athlete who trains for 15 hours per week.

 

Through trial and error, I realized that when I would taper for an event from a high-volume training program (greater than 20 hours per week), I just felt sluggish and weak if I reduced the training too much during the final preparation. My body was used to the work, and going to the other extreme didn't feel good or work for me, but I had to be intentional about what I was doing in my training.

I believe that most athletes, myself included, have gotten their taper wrong by doing too much higher-intensity work in race week. I feel that too much intensity is more of an issue than too much volume. My rule of thumb was always to reduce the volume by about 30-40% in race week (a little more for an Ironman) and cap the intensity at my target race pace intensity or effort level and no higher. Certainly, nothing anywhere near a max effort.

 

Short interval durations at race effort with a lot of recovery between intervals was my MO for race week. These were my individual training guidelines for a taper week. You will need to work out yours and the variations between tapering for Olympic Distance, Half-Ironman, and Ironman events.

 

As I got older and my overall training loads reduced considerably, my taper actually resembled a normal training week in a lot of ways but still reflected the lower volume, less intensity mindset.

Strength Training During Taper

For strength and conditioning during taper, my focus was on maintenance and proper functional movement rather than trying to overload and increase strength. I would still do 2-3 core stability and activation routines during race week, including one immediately after traveling to an event to get everything “switched back on.” My core routines were slightly abbreviated from my normal practice and focused more on activation than gains.

As for lifting, I would hit the gym only once during race week, and this would come early in the week, usually the Monday or Tuesday. My body was used to lifting weights, so I could slightly reduce the load from my normal sessions by dropping my weight by approximately 20% and reducing the number of sets and reps, and still maintain my strength without getting any muscle soreness.

Keep a Consistent Routine

I’m an advocate of not changing too much from your normal routine as you head into race week. I always prioritized and focused on my recovery, which was no different during a race taper. Get plenty of sleep in the bank, particularly early in the week, as you may have to contend with travel, jet lag, nervousness, or restlessness in the last couple of days and nights.

My eating habits wouldn't change that much during my taper, either. Of course, with lower training loads and fewer calories expended, I would often have a slightly lower appetite. I definitely never counted calories and was always guided by my hunger. If I felt hungry, I would eat and eat well. I wanted to be fully fueled and full of energy for race day.

As someone who regularly received bodywork and massage, I kept things consistent during my taper. My therapists knew my body well and always understood whether it was deeper work or just light maintenance that was required and problem areas to target. It is important that we all understand our bodies and how we respond to training and treatment. For those many occasions when I traveled to events and had to source local therapists, I knew my body and could instruct them on the type or depth of treatment that I was after.

 

Ice baths and compression are also things I regularly implemented as recovery techniques during my training, so I would include these in my taper or race week schedule as well. I always felt great after an ice bath, regardless of what the most recent research suggested.

Keep it Simple

Many races have been derailed by overdoing things in the last 7-10 days or doing too little. It can be hard to get the balance exactly right. Get to know your body (and mind) and figure out what works best for you so you arrive at the start line feeling fresh, strong, fast, and sharp. If in doubt, remember there are no real fitness gains or adaptations during race week that come without a cost. Taper correctly and be ready to lay down a performance worthy of your preparation and motivation.

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