For Grateful Dead fans in the ‘80s, a “taper” was someone who recorded the band’s live concerts. It was a little counterintuitive for the Dead to undercut their record sales by allowing their fans to make these tapes, but they did it anyway. For distance runners, “taper” has a different meaning that is also a little counterintuitive. Just when you feel fit enough to do more, you’re supposed to do less. In Minute 2 of Saturday’s special edition newsletter, “Last-Minute Marathon Preparation,” we reviewed a simple approach – gradually reduce mileage before race day, but keep some intensity so your legs stay sharp. Now we’ve got more numbers to back that up: “The Relaxed Taper Mistake Costing You Up to 8 Minutes.” A 2021 analysis of Strava data from more than 158,000 marathoners found that runners who reduced their mileage every week for the final three weeks finished a median 5:32 faster than those who barely tapered. Roughly 69% of runners followed a relaxed taper, allowing mileage to climb back up after an initial reduction. Compared with strict tapers of the same length, that approach was associated with finishing about 1 to 1.5 minutes slower. These are observational findings, so other differences between runners could explain some of the gap. There’s also experimental evidence supporting the importance of maintaining intensity. In a controlled trial of nine trained middle-distance runners, a seven-day taper featuring short, hard intervals improved time to exhaustion at race pace by 22%, compared with no improvement from a rest-only taper. For marathoners, the practical advice is to reduce mileage consistently over two to three weeks, keep familiar workouts shorter, and resist the urge to make up missed long runs.

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