Train less to race faster

Researchers in Canada worked with nine highly trained middle-distance runners, all men. After eight weeks of training, each man tried three different tapers. Each one lasted a week. Between them, the runners went back to training for four weeks.

In one taper they ran very little, and nearly all of it fast. In another they ran a moderate amount, all of it slow. In the third they rested.

After each taper, the runners ran on a treadmill at the pace of their best 1,500 metres. They kept going until they could not go on. After the week of little but fast running, they lasted 22 percent longer. The slow week and the week of rest made no clear difference.

The researchers also measured the runners' blood and muscles. Rest refilled the fuel in their muscles, but they lost blood volume. The fast week refilled the fuel too. It also added blood, and more of the red cells that carry oxygen.

So a taper is not rest. You cut the amount and keep the speed. What you have built fades slowly, as long as you keep training. Stop altogether, and some of it starts to slip within a week. It did for the runners who rested.

Another team looked inside the muscles of six university swimmers. For five months they had swum about 6,200 metres a day. Then they cut their training back for a taper.

Before and after, the researchers tested single fibres from the swimmers' shoulder muscles. The fast fibres had grown thicker, stronger and quicker. In the water, the swimmers were 4 percent faster.

The taper did more than let them rest. Their muscles kept improving while they trained less.

Researchers pooled 27 studies of tapers in competitive athletes. The best results came from a taper of about two weeks. The total amount of training was cut gradually, a little more each day. In all, it was cut by 41 to 60 percent. The athletes kept training at the same speeds. They trained on as many days as before.

A review of the research found that a taper usually improves performance by about 3 percent. On a four-hour day, that is about seven minutes.

So take two weeks, and cut a little more each day. Keep training on the days you usually train. Make each session shorter. Over the first week, that comes to about half your usual hours. Cut your longest session to about half as well. If you train in more than one sport, cut each one by about half.

Keep the speed. In two or three sessions a week, add a few short pieces at the effort you plan to race at, or a little quicker. Keep each piece short. Rest fully between them. They hold on to your speed, and they are too short to tire you. It works the same on foot, on the bike and in the water.

In race week, cut further. Keep each session to about half an hour at base. Base is the steady effort you could keep up for hours. Keep the few short fast pieces in two or three of these sessions. Do no long session at all. The race is the big effort of the week. The day before, go out for about half an hour with a few quick pieces. Then stop.

If you lift weights, keep it light in the first week, in moves you know. In race week, lift nothing heavy and nothing new. A heavy load or a new move can leave your muscles sore for days.

Try no new kit and no new food in these two weeks. A new saddle can rub you raw by the second pass. New shoes can blister. A new food can upset your stomach on the day. How to fill up on starch before a long day belongs to the chapter Starch fuels the long days.

Taper for every race you enter to do your best, whatever its distance. Your best comes when you start rested.

A day you set yourself, with no race around it, is different. If it is long, taper for it. That means a marathon, a 160-kilometre ride, a half-distance triathlon, or longer. A day that long empties you. You want to start it full, not already drained.

A shorter day, done as a step towards something bigger, needs no taper before it. Recover from it afterwards instead. The chapter Small goals build the fitness you keep explains how.

Sleep often goes wrong in the last nights. Researchers asked 283 elite Australian athletes about their sleep. Almost two in three had slept worse before an important competition at least once in the past year. Most often they could not fall asleep. What kept them awake was thinking about the competition.

So do not count on the last night. Sleep well in the weeks before it. Eleven university basketball players spent five to seven weeks aiming for ten hours in bed each night. They slept almost two hours more a night. By the end, they sprinted faster. Give yourself more time in bed as the day comes closer, not less.

In the evenings of race week, wind down with a little yoga before bed. Keep it to a few minutes, gentle and slow. Move through shapes you already know. Hold nothing long and nothing deep. Breathe slowly the whole time.

Then lie down and keep breathing slowly. In Taiwan, 14 people who slept badly breathed six times a minute for 20 minutes before bed. In a sleep laboratory, they fell asleep sooner and woke less often. A poor night can still happen. It says nothing about your fitness.

So on that Saturday morning, leave the six-hour ride. It would feel like insurance. It would only start your taper tired. Ride three hours at base instead, and come home.

The months of rides are in your legs. Training less in the last two weeks clears the tiredness and sharpens the muscle, so all of it shows on the day. Then one morning you stand at the start among hundreds of riders. You are rested, and you carry everything you built.