What is the best way to taper for a 5k?

Audio Transcript

Coach Claire: Today’s question is from Keith about tapering for a 5k.

Keith: My name is Keith and I’m a fairly competitive age group runner. I run six days a week and average about 35 to 40 miles.

I’m wondering what your recommendations are for tapering for a shorter race, like a goal 5k, and how your recommendations might differ for a goal race as opposed to a non-goal race. Thanks a lot.

Coach Claire: This is a great question. We get so many questions about marathon tapering but not too many people ask about 5k tapering.

It is just as important to pay attention to your taper week for a goal 5k, as it is for a marathon, but of course since it’s a shorter distance, it’s going to look a lot different.

For a taper for a 5k, a goal race, you’re going to want to have three to four days before your race with reduced effort in mileage.

You don’t want to have complete rest but you do want to cut back on the miles and not have so much work at high intensity.

You don’t want to eliminate all your intensity but you need to cut back your mileage.

The reason for this is you need to repair your muscles and not overload them, so that they are fresh for the race, but you don’t want to cut back so much that you feel stale and stiff like you’ve forgotten how to race.

The volume is going to reduce each of the three to four days to be lower than your typical work out days. As I said, the intensity is still maintained; you don’t want to just spend a week of easy running.

You can keep in a few strides.

Strides are short sprints at the end of easy runs. They help maintain your quick leg turnover and you may even consider adding in a mile, or maybe half mile at your 5k pace, in between your easy paced runs at the end of the week, before your race.

Let’s take a look at what a typical 5k taper would look like during a week.

Let’s say your race is on a Saturday. Your last work out is going to be your dress rehearsal for the 5k race. That would typically be on Monday.

You want to have a speed session with lots of goal pace work. You want to nail that goal pace. You don’t want to run faster or slower; you want to have that goal pace just drilled into your head so that you can do it no matter what.

An example of a really good taper week, goal pace 5k work out would be a 12 by 400 workout. That is 12 reps of 400 metres. On most tracks, 400 metres is one lap around the track. That is three miles of quality work at goal pace so that you’re getting the entire distance of the 5k during your work out but you’re not going to be running an entire 5k without any breaks. You are going to have rest breaks in between.

A 100 metre jog recovery is a really classic amount of rest during race week. I don’t want you to stop and stand there; that’s a different system that you’re working on, but you want to jog that recovery.

You want to make sure you’re going goal pace, no faster than goal pace. This is where you are practicing and getting it in your head that your body knows exactly how to move on race day.

You want to focus on staying comfortable at this pace. This is what you’re going to be doing on Saturday so you want to get that practice in, but you still have those 100-metre jog recoveries to lessen the workload on you.

It should not be an easy workout but it’s not going to be super hard. You’re not running all 3.1 miles or 5k at once; you are getting those breaks every quarter mile, but it’s far enough away from your goal race, that you should feel recovered well before race day, yet you won’t be feeling flat when you toe the line.

On Tuesday, this is a great day to have a full rest day.

You want to rest, relax, and absorb your training both mentally and physically. This is where your muscles are starting to repair from the work that you just did the day before.

You don’t need to spend the entire day laying flat on your couch, but minimal activity is recommended to really get a full day’s rest on race week.

You said, Keith, that you normally run six days a week. You have a rest day worked in, so this should feel very normal to have a rest day. Go ahead and do that on Tuesday.

Wednesday, we’re looking at some more easy running, low volume, so could be about half of what you normally run on an easy day.

You may want to throw in a few strides at the end so maybe four strides of 20 seconds each, just getting a little bit of speed in your legs, working on that nice form.

Just to make sure that you’re not stiff and stale, you can add two to four strides at the end of your easy day.

On Thursday, again, we’re still focusing on easy and short days, but you might want to throw in 800 metres or maybe as much as a mile into that workout day at your goal pace, no faster.

If you are going to go as much as a mile at goal pace, you want an easy, short warm up and an easy short cool down, so not much more than three or four miles on Thursday.

On Friday, it should be even easier and even shorter as this is the day before your goal race. You can throw in two to three strides again if you want to. Those are totally optional just to make sure that you’re not feeling flat. You can throw in just a little bit of speed at the end but again that’s optional.

The day before race day is mostly just to get the blood moving, and to feel like you’re getting some circulation, and a last minute repair of any muscle damage the day before race day.

Other points to consider during taper week is hydration. You can’t make up a hydration deficit all in the day before. It takes several days to have optimal hydration so you want to focus on it the whole week, especially if you’re running this race in the summer.

Hot weather as we know, takes a lot of water out of us, so you want to make sure that you’re hydrating properly the entire week.

You also want to think about stretching and foam rolling. You want to use the extra time that you’re not running during taper, to maintain your flexibility and to keep from being too stiff.

Go ahead and foam roll out the legs and get into those trigger points, and keep yourself from getting too stiff and stay nice and comfortable.

Don’t forget the mental aspect of racing. You want to do a mental rehearsal so make sure that your race routine is well planned. You should know how long you’re going to be warming up, know exactly what you’re going to be wearing on race day, and know exactly what you’re eating as a pre-race meal.

Hopefully, this should be something that you’ve practiced many times before. You also want to think about your strategy.

Obviously, like any race, don’t go out too fast and get that race pace nail down and kick your way to a strong finish. Practice that in your mind, and think about what you’re going to be doing.

Imagine the racecourse, and visualize yourself succeeding. The mental aspect of racing is extremely important, and so many times we forget to practice that part so go ahead and do a dress rehearsal in your mind, and visualize yourself nailing that goal pace and getting that PR.

The second part to your question was,what if it’s not a goal race? If it’s not your goal race, you can just run the 5k as you would any work out.

No reason to taper, if you normally run two days a week. This could be a third workout in the week, or you can just shift your week around so that it’s your second workout of the week.

You can run an extra-long warm up at an easy pace, go ahead and race the 5k, and then have an extra-long cool down.

That would make a nice, long run with some quality miles in the middle. I hope that helps Keith. That was a great question and best of luck on race day.

That’s it for my week hosting the Run to the Top Extra Kick podcast. If you’d like to get your question answered on a future episode, record it at runnersconnect.net/daily. Have a great run today.

Finally, this episode has been brought to you by Health IQ. I think we all can agree that finding life insurance to fit your needs can be a bit unfair. You’re a runner, which means you’re much fitter than the average population.

You probably eat healthier, exercise more than average, have a higher health IQ, and you avoid unhealthy habits like smoking.

Research has shown that avid runners have a 41% lower risk of heart disease and a 35% lower risk of early death. So why should you pay the same insurance rates as those who don’t take care of themselves as well?

That’s the mission of Health IQ, a life insurance company that specializes in getting the best rates and advantages for healthy people like you.

At RunnersConnect we really love Health IQ because like us, they focus on actual scientific research and big data to support everything they do.

Health IQ has taken that research and data and spent the last few years securing better rates with top insurers for runners and other health conscious people.

If you’d like to see how much they can lower your life insurance costs, head to runnersconnect.net/healthiq and learn more, take a quiz, or get a free quote.

Thanks for listening and have a great run today.