An exercise physiologist and a run coach explain the signs to watch for and the training tweaks that can help set you up for a PB on race day.

Take a long, deep breath, as deep as you can, and hold it. Imagine the air in your lungs represents the fitness you’ve accumulated over months of marathon training. Eventually, you’ll need to exhale. But your goal for race day is to toe the starting line with your lungs at max capacity, before you start letting that breath out. In other words, you want to race at your peak fitness.

The key to getting that timing right? Mastering the taper.

Peaking too early in training means you’re racing on the exhale: Your highest level of fitness is already behind you. But that’s not what you want. Instead, you want to peak as close to marathon day as possible so you reap the full benefit of all the kilometres you’ve put in, and that requires nailing a crucial element of training. The key to getting that timing right? Mastering the taper.

Peaking too early happens when you’ve either started your taper too early or you’ve tapered too aggressively, according to Jeff Gaudette, the founder and head coach of RunnersConnect. This can cause your fitness to begin dropping before you get to race day. “Of the two, tapering too aggressively is the more common mistake, and novice marathoners can be more susceptible to this,” he explains.

Still, both experienced and novice runners may struggle to find the optimal reduction in training load during the weeks leading up to a marathon.

But the good news is that peaking too early doesn’t mean you’ve lost your shot at a PB. We talked with two run coaches about how you can prevent it, what signs to watch for, and ways to adjust your training to get back on track.

With the right preparation, timing, and smart taper tweaks, you’ll have the confidence to show up on race day ready to perform at your peak.

How to Prevent Peaking Too Early
As Gaudette says above, peaking too early in marathon training usually happens when a runner either begins their taper too early or overtapers.

Overtapering means that you’ve cut too much mileage or intensity (or both) in the weeks leading up to your race. The result? You miss the window of your highest fitness level, and you toe the starting line with your fitness already on the downswing.

But that also doesn’t mean you should err on the side of undertapering; you just need to ensure your drops in volume and intensity happen at the right times and in the right amounts.

“Tapering is vital, especially for the marathon,” says Janet Hamilton, CSCS, an exercise physiologist and the founder and head coach of Running Strong. “The taper will be unique to each athlete, but a good rule of thumb is to start the process about three weeks out from race day.”

Hamilton emphasises that the taper can take a bit of trial and error over a few training cycles to determine your ideal protocol. Some of Hamilton’s athletes have learned they race better on a shorter taper, while others do better with a longer one.

Many runners will hit their highest volume of training, or close to it, before beginning their taper about three weeks before race day. This is your peak week, explains Hamilton.

The week after your peak, you’ll start slightly decreasing the distance of each of your weekly runs, as well as your long run. “Trim about 20 percent from your long run, but make sure you maintain some intensity throughout the week,” says Hamilton. “You don’t want to cut out speed entirely.” She suggests keeping one or two runs in your training week that include efforts at your marathon goal pace.

With one week left before race week, you’ll cut another 20 to 25 percent of your long-run distance and drop a few more midweek kilometres, but you’ll still do some running at goal marathon pace.

The week of the race, Hamilton tells her athletes to pull the plug on their strength training and add in an extra recovery day.

According to Hamilton, a relatively novice marathoner’s long-run taper could be: 32 to 35 kilometres three weeks out, 25 kilometres at two weeks out, then 16 to 20 kilometres on the weekend before running 42.2 kilometres on race day.

By gradually decreasing mileage and intensity, but still maintaining a modest training stimulus, you’ll be able to recover enough to feel fresh and ready to race hard. This means you won’t lose any fitness, and it’s less likely you’ll feel stale or lethargic.

“You want to toe the line on race day at the sweet spot where you’re fully refreshed and adequately rested, but your body hasn’t yet started to de-adapt,” Hamilton says. “That can leave your legs feeling just a little bit dead and not ready for the task at hand.”

Signs That You’re Peaking Too Early
It can be hard to distinguish between typical taper fatigue and the symptoms of peaking too early, says Gaudette.

“Generally speaking, you’re going to feel lethargic when you’ve overtapered,” Gaudette explains. “During your runs, even your easy runs, you’re going to feel like you don’t have any energy.”

The frustrating part is that some runners may also feel that way even when they’ve tapered correctly, he adds. Sometimes those feelings of unusual tiredness are simply the result of a change in your established running routine and training load.

But overall, Gaudette says that your fatigue will feel much more dramatic if you’ve peaked too early before your marathon. “When you first start a run during your taper, you may feel a little lethargic, but it goes away. Whereas, if you’ve overtapered, you might feel lethargic the whole run or even the whole day,” he explains. If that happens, it can mean you’ll head into race day feeling flat, unless you make some tweaks to your training.

What Can I Do to Fix It?
Don’t panic. You have a few tools at your disposal if you suspect you may have peaked a bit too soon. “It can be a little challenging for runners to adjust on the fly,” says Gaudette, “because you don’t want to do anything too drastic.” The key is to add a bit more mileage and intensity, without overdoing it.

Gaudette typically recommends this workout about a week out from race day:

• 3 kilometres at 10 seconds faster than goal marathon pace, followed by 3 minutes of rest.
• 2 x 3 minutes at roughly your kilometre pace, each followed by 3 minutes of rest.
• 2 x 60 seconds at roughly your kilomtre pace, each followed by 90 seconds of rest.

Doing a little extra volume near your goal marathon pace, followed by some faster intervals that get your legs turning over, can provide just enough of a stimulus before the marathon, he explains. “But the long rests and short durations mean you won’t build up any fatigue.” The last thing you want is to overcorrect by running too much or too hard, leaving yourself under-recovered on race day.

Besides that quick fine-tuning workout, Gaudette cautions against adjusting training too much when you’re feeling fatigued. “It can lead to overanalysing,” he says. “It’s possible that you’re not actually overtapered – this may just be how your body responds to the change in your training.” For that reason, it can be smart to just wait and see how the race goes, and then take those learnings into your next marathon training cycle.

The best way to do that? Keep a training log, Hamilton says. “It’s so important to make notes of what worked and what didn’t work throughout training. You’re an experiment of one: Coaches can give you guidelines, but ultimately how your body responds may be very unique to you.”

Maintaining a detailed training log is the only way you can make those game-changing realisations. For example, lessons like “I ran my best races when I followed this taper pattern versus that other taper pattern” or “those energy gels didn’t sit well at all, but these other ones worked great over the final kays” are incredibly valuable to take from one training block to the next.

Finally, Hamilton says it’s crucial to train with patience as you prepare for your marathon. “The single most common error I see in all the athletes I’ve coached over the decades is that they beat themselves up in training. They run at, or near, race pace too often or ramp up intensity too quickly,” she explains.

“Train smart. Listen to your body. Respect the process and what your body is trying to accomplish,” Hamilton adds. “If you give your body what it needs, it will reward you with truly amazing improvements.”

This article first appeared on the Runner’s World USA website.

READ MORE ON: marathon tapering peaking