149: How to Taper Well for a Race or Competition

0:05Nick Bare:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today is all about tapering, how to taper for a race or a competition, as well as how to carbohydrate load in preparation for a race or competition, being a big endurance effort. Now, I'm in a taper right now for Ironman Arizona, which is in three days. At the time of this recording, it is Thursday, November 13th, 2025. I raced this Sunday. I've put in an 18-week prep for Ironman Arizona, and it was a big prep. As I've talked about many times before, my training was anywhere from 19 to 22 hours a week. Running mileage was between 60 and 65 miles a week.

1:05Nick Bare:I topped out at 65 miles a week and that was two weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. So it was a big effort. There's a lot of training and I have found over the years with all the different races and competitions that I've done that a taper can make a big difference actually. And there's ways to do a taper right. There's definitely ways to do a taper wrong. But at the end of the day, a taper, which we're going to get into here, I'm probably going to say the word taper many, many times throughout this episode. So just be prepared for that. But a taper is very specific to an individual, but even more so, it is specific to the prep.

1:59Nick Bare:If you put in a huge block of training and you've accumulated a lot of volume, intensity, you're carrying a lot of fatigue, the taper is going to be more important and more beneficial as opposed to if you just put you know a lighter shorter intense volume driven prep in preparation for a race or competition i have a little little subtitle here for this episode and it's it's a question can you endure the taper because the taper for any of you who has experienced one before or has done one right it is commonly more mentally challenging than anything else in the prep and we'll get into to why and how but the question i want to pose for you guys to kind of just think on throughout this episode is, can you endure the taper?

3:10Nick Bare:Going back to this conversation I had with Pastor Lyle Phillips a few years ago, he posed the question, can you do your job? Can you do your job and then do it correctly and be committed to doing your job? In my opinion, part of a very successful prep is the taper. That is part of your job within the prep. Can you do your job? Can you taper well? Can you taper strong? Now, what is a taper? A taper is a planned reduction in training volume and or intensity, typically both, before a major event being a race or competition. And it allows your body to recover from accumulated fatigue while also maintaining your level of fitness.

4:11Nick Bare:So you can perform at your physical and mental peak come race or competition day. The way that I like to think about it is how do I show up race day? as fit, as healthy, as fresh as possible.

4:33Nick Bare:Like I mentioned, the taper is mentally challenging and we'll get into why. But when I've done a taper right, I show up race day, I tow that line and I have springs in my legs. I have springs in my body. I am so just charged up, ready to just full send. And when I show up feeling like that, I know that I put in a really solid block of training and I've tapered well to show up fit, fresh and healthy to lay down the best performance possible a lot of people who don't taper right or taper well they accumulate all this fatigue and i say they but i've also been in this situation before i've done this wrong i i've i've tapered incorrectly before you put in this huge block of training and you accumulate all this fatigue, you're carrying this fatigue in your legs, your entire body, your central nervous system, you're not recovered and you've built this fitness.

5:54Nick Bare:But there's this blunting effect on that fitness because you're carrying so much fatigue that when you come race day or competition day, you can't achieve your full athletic potential because that fatigue that you're carrying isn't allow you to really utilize your fitness. You want to build fitness and then be able to utilize the fitness that you've built. But if you're trying to go into a race or competition fatigued, you're not really able to test your true athletic physical capabilities and performance. So I believe that a taper is, like I said, a critical component of a successful build or prep.

6:49And when done correctly, you show up race day feeling like a million bucks, feeling so good mentally, physically, your central nervous system is recovered, it's primed, and you're ready to throw down. I think back to one of my most successful preps, races, tapers, builds, performance.

7:18Nick Bare:It was my last marathon at the California International Marathon where I ran two hours, 39 minutes. And I will never forget this feeling where I was in the corral waiting for the race to start. It was brisk. It was cool. Like I said, I put in a great prep working alongside coach Jeff Cunningham. Nutrition was dialed. The taper was executed flawlessly. I was carbed up. I was fueled up for that race. And I was standing in the corral waiting for the gun to go off. And I had so much built up energy within my body that it felt like it wanted to just rip out of my skin. I could feel this potential in my legs, in my arms, within my mind.

8:19Nick Bare:I mean, I was standing in that crowd and it's so hard to describe if you've never experienced it before, but you just want to clench your fists and scream and sprint because you're so excited, you're so proud of the work that's been put in, but you're fit, healthy, and fresh to go throw down, in this case for the next 26.2 miles to run as fast and sustainable and hard as possible to experience and achieve the best time you possibly can. That's the goal. Now the benefits of a taper, if done correctly. Again, this is something that you will refine over time and through experience. It's pretty rare that you get your taper and your carbohydrate load and your prep and your build dialed in perfectly for your first race or competition.

9:29Nick Bare:But over time, with more experience, more repetitions, it becomes more refined. You learn more through the process. It gets better and better and better. And at this point, my prep process, my training, my nutrition, my taper, my carbohydrate load plan, it's all so dialed from years of repetition and experience and trial and effort and finding things that work and what doesn't work. So if you're going after your first race and you don't have the perfect build or prep and you don't have the perfect taper and you don't have the perfect carbohydrate load plan, that's okay. You'll learn from it and you'll do it better the next time.

10:12Nick Bare:So just keep that in mind. But the benefits, we want to reduce fatigue as i've mentioned both physically and mentally to show up race day primed absolutely primed we want to allow full muscle repair because over the previous weeks or months we have broken down a lot of muscle we've put our bodies through extreme stressors through training and fatigue. So during the taper, we want to allow for full muscle repair. We want to increase and optimize muscle glycogen restoration. So muscle glycogen, this is how your body stores carbohydrates that can be utilized during long endurance efforts, which we'll get into when we talk about the carbohydrate load plan.

11:03Nick Bare:Right now, I am three days out. As I mentioned from Ironman, Arizona, this is the first day of my carb load. I will consume about 800 grams of carbs today. Tomorrow, I'll consume another 800 grams of carbs. So I like to carbohydrate load three and two days out from a race, which we'll get into. But that's part of the taper. That's one of the benefits is to increase and optimize muscle glycogen restoration because it's a a little side note here. When we're in a big prep and a big build, we're consuming a lot of nutrition. We're consuming a lot of energy, a lot of calories, a lot of carbohydrates when it comes to especially an endurance effort.

11:51Nick Bare:But because we're burning so much of that up, our muscles are very rarely fully topped off on muscle glycogen because we're depleting them through training. But during the taper, as volume of training is reduced, we actually have the opportunity to top off our muscle glycogen stores. And then an additional benefit of the taper is to optimize nervous system readiness. So that is our central nervous system or CNS. Our CNS gets taxed pretty heavily during a big prep and a big build. and that's just because of the volume of training, the intensity, the effort, the demands that it puts on our body.

12:36Nick Bare:This is one of the reasons that as you get deeper into a prep or a build, you're probably going to start experiencing accumulated fatigue mentally and physically. This is one of the reasons that you should incorporate deload weeks into your training protocols. and builds that allows for some of this central nervous system recovery. But I am now feeling just like the restoration of my central nervous system after 17 and a half weeks of really hard work. So I'm experiencing all of these benefits right now. Being seven days into my 10-day taper, I have reduced fatigue both physically and mentally.

13:29Nick Bare:I feel that my muscles are repairing. Muscle glycogen is topping off. I'm gaining a little bit of weight in the taper. That's normal. We'll get into that. And central nervous system wise, I can just feel is recovering finally after many weeks of a prep. So those are the benefits of a taper. Question, how long should a taper be? And this is again, or it comes down to the individual. It depends on the length of your training prep or build and the amount of fatigue you're carrying. It's unique to each athlete, an individual and experience. But for me personally, I enjoy a 10-day taper. Now, there's so many different thoughts and ideas around the length of the taper.

14:28And this is one of the reasons that I wanted to record this podcast episode. As I was just doing a little bit of research, I was curious how much information is available online through podcast articles, YouTube videos on how to taper. Because when I talk to athletes,

14:48Nick Bare:especially athletes who are newer to racing and competition, who might not have as much experience, they don't know how to taper. And I wanted to really break down just how important I believe it is. Now there's people who do three-week tapers. There's people who do two-week, 14-day tapers. There's some people who do five-day tapers. I've experimented with a bunch of different lengths and durations. And for me personally, this might work for you too. I have found that a 10-day taper works very well. Anything longer than that feels a bit much and I feel a little sluggish come race day. And anything shorter than that doesn't feel like enough time to shed the fatigue.

15:47Nick Bare:Now, I will say right before the taper started, I was carrying a lot of fatigue, both physically and mentally. And I was very much looking forward to this taper starting because I knew I would just come back to life. My legs were very, very heavy towards the end of this prep. And it almost gets to the point sometimes

16:19Nick Bare:where I wake up and I see my training for the day This was towards the end of prep before the taper started. There was never a day where I was going to question whether or not I was going to do the workouts or not. But you do get to a point where you're carrying so much fatigue physically and mentally that you don't enjoy the workouts anymore. Like runs didn't feel good at one point towards the end of the prep because all this fatigue was accumulating physically, mentally, central nervous system was taxed towards the end. So I was looking forward to the taper, knowing that I would come back to life.

17:03Nick Bare:So if you're carrying a lot of fatigue towards the end of a prep, like this taper can be so beneficial. And for me personally, I enjoy 10 days. 10 days, it feels like forever. I'm one day, I guess seven of the taper. And I feel like I've been in this block of training for four weeks at this point. And you start to lose your mind a little bit because you start questioning your fitness. Am I ready? Am I losing fitness? Am I getting slower? Am I going to be able to perform come race day? And I'll share, you know, like I said, why it's mentally challenging to taper for 10 days or towards the end of a big training block, but it makes a big difference.

17:56Nick Bare:You're carrying a lot of fatigue, whether you know it or not. And when you get deeper into the taper, it's like this light bulb goes off and your mind opens and you realize how much fatigue you've actually been carrying throughout the last couple of weeks and maybe even months when you start to shed some of this fatigue. It's like, oh, this is what normal feels like. I forgot what normal and being rested and refreshed and alive feels like again, because I've just been at it for so many weeks and months at this point. Some things to avoid during a taper. One, training too much. If you're going to taper, you have to ask yourself the question, like I started this episode, can you do your job?

18:51Nick Bare:Can you endure the taper? Because what happens with so many people and I've been here before, you get into the taper, volume starts decreasing, intensity starts decreasing a little bit, not as much as volume. And you start to question yourself, am I losing fitness? Am I wasting all the work that's been done these last couple of months. So what commonly happens, and I've done this, you start sneaking in extra training sessions to test your fitness, just to make sure it's still there. This is what happens when you don't trust the plan. Trust the process, trust the plan. It's really easy that when you get in the taper, you start questioning the process, you start questioning the plan, and you start increasing training volume again because you're afraid that you're losing your fitness.

19:50Nick Bare:Rest assured, you're not losing fitness. You're allowing that fitness to be exposed with rest. So a big mistake is that people kick off a taper and they reintroduce volume because they're afraid they're losing fitness. A second thing to avoid. Neglecting nutrition. You've been in this big training block in build for months now. You've been expending a lot of energy, a lot of calories. You're burning a lot of calories. There were days in this prep where I was burning five to 6 ,000 calories on some of these big training days. Something to avoid during the taper is that so many people are afraid to gain weight within the taper, which I understand, I get it, but you cannot neglect nutrition during the taper.

20:51Nick Bare:So what happens to a lot of people, and again, I've made this mistake. You end up cutting your calories significantly because you're not expending as much energy. You don't want to gain weight. So you cut your calories by too much, which doesn't allow your body to recover and then come race day, you are still depleted and you're not recovered or rested. And now you're trying to perform in race or compete as a depleted athlete. You still have to prioritize nutrition, cool work consumption, hydration, water,

21:37sleep during the taper. Don't neglect nutrition. Don't cut calories by too much. I personally like to keep my caloric intake pretty similar during the taper as it was during training. And you'll gain a few pounds. It's okay. It's okay. But I'd rather be fully rested and recovered and healed and sitting a little heavier. And when I'm saying a little heavier, it's like two pounds as opposed to under recovered and depleted so that I can't perform. Another mistake is that people will start filling the empty space within their day or their calendar with new activities.

22:27Nick Bare:you know when it comes to an ironman prep for example

22:33Nick Bare:most days at a minimum i was training three hours a day and there were days where i was training six hours a day these big brick workouts bikes and runs but on a pretty average day throughout prep it was three hours of training a day when you decrease training volume going to the taper for those last 10 days in my case there's a lot of empty space on on your calendar and as you start getting deeper in the taper and your mental energy comes back your physical energy comes back it's really easy to want to fill that empty space with new activities I've been tempted with that in this this prep in this taper alone I haven't done much strength training Throughout the last 17 and a half weeks Next week i'll start reincorporating strength training again after the race is over which i'm super excited for But this week in particular I had a lot more empty space in my calendar Training volume was decreased significantly and I started thinking, well, maybe I should just like go into the gym and hit a few strength workouts, which is the last thing I should be doing.

23:50You know, I haven't prioritized strength training in the last 17 and a half weeks and the thought process of going into the gym and hitting a hard workout. So then I'm sore and incorporating muscles that I haven't used in a meaningful way for months. Horrible idea, horrible idea. but it's really easy to want to fill that empty space with different activities. You'll see it with people where they're in their taper. They're not training as much. They go play a sports game with friends. They're playing a flag football game or they go to the

24:29Nick Bare:basketball court and they're running up and down the court for one to two hours. They end up getting hurt. But more importantly, they are, you are, and I've been there, not letting your body actually rest and recover, which is the main intent and point of the taper. Don't try to add in extra cross-training activities to make up for what you're pulling back from. It's counterproductive to what we're actually trying to achieve within the taper. And the last thing to avoid is overanalyzing the taper. The taper is extremely physically beneficial. But like I said, it is mentally challenging because after training so much for so many weeks and months, when you start reducing volume, it's going to feel like you are lazy and you are losing your fitness.

25:30But it is part of the process.

25:35Nick Bare:something that I've experienced with every fitness prep I've done the last couple of years. It's like clockwork. And if you, if you Google this and search this online, it is not just me. There are so many athletes who experience this phantom pains and injuries. They always start like two weeks out from a race where throughout a whole prep and build, you know, you're constantly trying to to recover and and problem solve these small little tweaks and minor injuries that just pop up you know there's something the entire prep it's either you got a tight calf or you have a little pull in a hamstring or uh you have foot problems like there's always something throughout of prep that you're trying to just like work through and navigate and put a band-aid on so it doesn't get too out of control but like clockwork two weeks out from any race there's always this phantom pain or injury that pops up and i believe that it's not actually an injury or a pain that you're experiencing i think part of it's just like the psychological warfare of being closer to your race.

27:03Nick Bare:When you're further out from a race and you start experiencing injuries, you know you have time to work through it. And that just give it a few weeks, you can work around it, it'll heal. The closer you get to race day, that margin of error becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. And for me, when I'm two weeks out, I know that if I get an injury or something goes wrong, I probably don't have enough time to fix it or allow it to heal. The light clockwork, two weeks out from Ironman, Arizona, I woke up one morning and my calf was killing me. And it was so tight on my runs. I had Dr. Jordan Tittle here, who comes into the office every Tuesday to work on the team.

27:49He was working on my calf. And a few days later, it just goes away, just disappears. I do think that part of that is also that you become more aware of the small little tweaks and injuries and things that hurt that you're experiencing because you know you're so close to the race and you just want it to be perfect. I woke up one morning with a sore throat and I'm just thinking, okay, this is going to lead to bronchitis or pneumonia or you just think, you start thinking of the worst possible case scenario and you start getting in your head. So don't overanalyze the taper. And if you start feeling these phantom injuries or pains, just know that many athletes experiences the closer you get to race day.

28:47Like I said, for me, it's two weeks out. Two weeks out from a race, something flares up. I start to overanalyze it. I start to freak out thinking

28:55Nick Bare:that I'm not gonna be able to make the race day. And then it just disappears. And I don't think about it ever again. Right now, as I'm sitting here, I don't feel anything in my calf. Two weeks ago, I felt like my calf was on the verge of tearing. okay so how do we set up a a proper taper again this is uh just the way that i approach it there's many different ways and you'll probably refine your plan as you experiment with different things i don't like to drop off volume and intensity too much too fast so it's really like this this stair stepper approach where i'll slowly start pulling back on training volume.

29:40Nick Bare:I like to keep intensity in there, but just at lower volumes. And then those last couple of days really pulling out intensity and reducing volume significantly. So it's this gradual reduction in volume and intensity for those 10 days, as opposed to like this hard cutoff and you're just doing this bare minimum work 10 days out. It's this slow, gradual. So for example, this Saturday, this past Saturday, which put me at eight days out from Ironman Arizona, I did my last long run. That was 10 miles. And then Sunday, no running. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I ran five miles. this morning being Thursday, I did four miles.

30:39Nick Bare:Tomorrow, Friday, I won't run at all. Saturday, I'll do a two and a half mile shakeout. So as you can see, just in my running, and I've done the same thing with cycling and swimming, it's this slow, gradual reduction in volume and intensity. Within the taper, you want to prioritize sleep. Now we should always be trying to prioritize sleep. But if you're in a similar situation as I am for the last 17 and a half weeks, unfortunately, sleep a lot of times just didn't get prioritized because of responsibilities and demands of life. Got a three-year-old daughter, got a one-year-old son. I have my beautiful wife, Steph, full-time job.

31:35There's a lot going on. Sometimes sleep is unfortunately one of the things that gets sacrificed first

31:44Nick Bare:to prioritize other parts of my life. but in those last 10 days, I try to prioritize sleep as much as possible. Go to sleep earlier, wake up a little later, which is also easier to do when I'm not running as much in the morning, even if it's just sleeping in an extra 30 minutes. But what I try to do is go to bed as early as possible to get seven to eight hours of sleep in that last 10 days of the prep. I like to prioritize mobility, stretching, massage, sauna, cold plunge. Even though I'm not training as much, I still want to keep moving my body. You know, like they say, motion is lotion. I like to keep moving my body so that it doesn't get stiff and tired and sore.