⏵ Training guide · Free

How to Taper for an Ultramarathon

To taper for an ultra, match the length to the distance: about 7 to 14 days for a 50K, 10 to 16 days for a 50 miler, and 2 to 3 weeks for a 100K or 100 miler. Cut volume hard and early, running roughly 40 to 50 percent of your normal week in the first taper week, 20 to 30 percent in the second, and under 20 percent in race week, and keep a little intensity at race effort so you stay sharp. Get your last long run in before the taper starts, top up your carbs in the final days, and take taper anxiety as a normal sign it is working. You cannot gain fitness in the last two weeks. But you can absolutely waste it.

How long should your taper be?

The most useful rule here is simple: longer race, longer taper. A 50K is close to a marathon and only needs a short, light unload. A 100 miler is built on a lot more volume and much longer back-to-backs, so it carries more fatigue and needs more time to shed it. Find your distance, then count back from race day.

⏵ By distance

Taper length and last long run, by race distance

Distance	Taper length	Last long run	Why
50K (31 mi)	7 to 14 days	2 weeks out	This one is closest to a marathon. A short, light taper does the job.
50 mile	10 to 16 days	2 to 3 weeks out	A bit more fatigue piled up here than a 50K, so give it a little more.
100K (62 mi)	2 to 3 weeks	3 weeks out	Bigger training load. So you need a deeper, longer unload.
100 mile	3 weeks (sometimes more)	3 to 4 weeks out	The biggest builds need the most recovery before you toe the line.

These are typical ranges, not laws. Your right taper also comes down to your age, how you recover, and how hard you trained. If you are racing a specific distance, our distance guides set the build this taper caps off: first 50K, first 100 miler, and the longest run question.

How much volume to cut each week

Do not just nibble a little off each week. Coaches like a fast-decay curve: drop volume hard and early so the fatigue clears, then hold a low, sharp level into the start. The numbers below are a percentage of your peak training week, so they work no matter what your normal looks like. The version you see cited most, from CTS coach Jason Koop, runs about 40 to 50 percent of normal in week one, 20 to 30 percent in week two, and under 20 percent in race week.

⏵ Fast-decay taper

Week-by-week volume off your peak week

When	Run this much	Reduction	What it feels like
3 weeks out (first taper week)	~60 to 75% of your peak week	Cut ~25 to 40%	Still real running. Drop the second long run and trim the midweek miles.
2 weeks out	~40 to 50% of your peak week	Cut ~50 to 60%	Clearly lighter now. Get your last real long run in early this week, then back off.
Race week	under ~30% of your peak week	Cut ~70%+	Short, easy, often. A few strides and then rest. You want sharp, not sore.

For a shorter 50K taper, squeeze this curve into 10 to 14 days instead of three weeks. A well-built taper is worth maybe a few percent of performance. Small, but free, and a lot easier to hold onto than to gain. Pair it with knowing your normal weekly mileage so the percentages mean something.

The four rules that make a taper work

A taper is not complicated, but it is easy to get wrong by overthinking it. Cut volume, keep a little intensity, do not go fully couch-bound, and trust the work. Here is each one in practice.

Cut volume, not frequency

Drop how far you run, not how often. If you normally run five days a week, keep running five days a week through most of the taper, just make those runs shorter. Holding the frequency keeps your legs in rhythm and your routine intact, and the falling distance is what actually sheds the fatigue. The biggest cut comes off your long runs and your second long run first, then off the midweek miles.

Use a fast decay: cut hard and early, then hold it low. Some coaches even halve the volume in the first few days of the taper and then ease off more gradually from there. The mistake is the timid, even ramp-down that trims a few miles a week and lands you on tired legs anyway.

Keep the type of intensity, cut the volume of it

This is the rule that separates a sharp taper from a flat one. Cut down the amount of fast running, but keep running fast at the same effort and pace you trained at. If a normal session was four by five minutes at tempo, do three by five three weeks out, two by five two weeks out, and one by five plus a handful of strides in race week. The hard segments get fewer and shorter. Never slower.

Strip out all the intensity and only jog easy and you will feel stale and heavy on the start line. A few short, race-effort efforts each week keep your neuromuscular system primed so that goal effort feels familiar when the gun goes off.

Do your last long run before the taper

The taper is not where you do your biggest run. It is where you let your biggest run clear. Your peak long run lands before the taper starts, roughly two weeks out for a 50K and three to four weeks out for a 100 miler. In the first taper week you can still do a moderately long run, but it should be clearly shorter than your peak, and by the final week your longest effort is just an easy 30 to 60 minutes.

Fight the urge to cram in a reassuring monster long run late. It will not add fitness in time to help you, and the recovery cost lands squarely on race day. The block is already built. The last long run is the final deposit, and the taper is the bank clearing it.

Stay sharp, do not go sedentary

Total rest for the final several days tends to leave you flat, stiff, and heavy instead of fresh. Keep moving with short, easy runs of 15 to 40 minutes and a few strides, and still take one or two real rest days in the final week. A day fully off two days out, plus a tiny shakeout the day before, is a common pattern that works.

The exceptions are real niggles and illness. If something genuinely hurts or you are getting sick, that is when extra rest earns its keep, because nothing you could do in the last week beats starting healthy. For everyone else, a little easy movement beats shutting down.

A sample race week

Here is what the final seven days can look like for a typical weekend ultra: short, easy, frequent running, a couple of real rest days, a few strides to stay primed, and a controlled carb top-up. Scale the minutes to your own normal.

⏵ Race week

The final seven days

MonEasy 20 to 40 min, or just rest. Sleep is the priority.

TueEasy 30 to 45 min with 4 to 6 x 20s strides at race-ish effort

WedRest, or an easy 20 to 30 min shakeout

ThuEasy 20 to 30 min and a few short strides. Legs should feel springy

FriRest or 15 to 20 min very easy. Start bumping up the carbs. Pack your drop bags.

SatOptional 10 to 15 min shakeout with 2 to 3 strides, or rest

SunRace day.

This is a template, not a prescription. The real version bends to your distance, your travel, and how you feel. For everything that is not running, work through our race-week and race-day checklist.

What to eat during the taper

Taper-week eating trips up a lot of runners, and it goes two opposite ways. Some cut calories because they are running less, others treat it as a green light to gorge on stuff they never eat. The right move is a controlled top-off with familiar food.

Top up carbohydrate, do not cut calories

As the volume drops, keep eating. The goal of the taper is to refill muscle glycogen, not to run a deficit, and pulling back training while bumping carbs up a bit is exactly how you super-compensate those stores. In the final two to three days, push carbohydrate toward roughly 7 to 10 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, using staples like rice, pasta, potatoes, oats, bread, and fruit. You will probably hold a little water weight. That is the glycogen and the water bound to it, and it is a good sign, not bloat to fight.

You do not need to force some dramatic carbo-load for a single weekend ultra, but a deliberate two-to-three-day top-up gives you a fuller tank at the start. Keep your hydration normal and steady instead of over-drinking, and keep your sodium about where it normally sits.

Do not experiment in taper week

This is the cardinal rule of taper nutrition: nothing new. No new supplements, no new big-fiber health kick, no untested race foods, no sudden huge portions your gut has never dealt with. An unfamiliar load on a nervous, tapering gut is one of the fastest ways to wreck your race morning, and there is honestly no upside to trying it this late.

Lock in the breakfast, gels, drink mix, and real food you already practiced on your long runs and back-to-backs. Taper week is for confirming what works, not finding out what does not. If your gut is a weak spot, see our guide on training it and dodging race-day stomach problems.

Taper anxiety is normal

Almost everyone gets the taper tantrums: phantom aches, restlessness, doubt, even a scratchy throat that comes and goes. As training drops off, your body has spare energy and your mind has spare time, and it spends both on worry. These usually fade in the last 24 to 48 hours.

Channel the energy, do not add training

The worst thing taper anxiety pushes you to do is cram in extra work, and that is exactly what wastes the taper. You cannot add real fitness in the final two weeks, but you can absolutely train through the recovery you need. When the urge to do more hits, point it at logistics instead: your drop bags, gear, crew and pacer plan, splits, and your fueling schedule. That is nervous energy put to good use.

Keep your strides and short race-effort efforts, because feeling fast on a couple of runs does more for your confidence than any pep talk. Sleep more than usual, because the taper is when sleep debt finally gets paid back. And that heavy, twitchy, slightly off feeling in the middle of the taper? Take it as proof it is working. That is the fatigue surfacing on its way out.

Lock the race plan instead of relitigating training

A calm taper comes from a settled plan. Nail down your pacing by effort, your aid-station routine, your power-hike strategy for the climbs, and your bail-out and problem-solving rules now, so race morning is just execution, not figuring it out on the fly. For a hard mountain race, walking the course profile in your head is a far better use of taper energy than a panic long run.

If your nerves are really spiking, read our guides on pacing by effort and the mental strategies for the back half. A rehearsed plan is the best answer to taper doubt there is.

⏵ Free calculators for race week

A good taper sets you up to execute. Turn the plan into real numbers with our free, no-signup tools.

See all free running tools →

⏵ Let the plan schedule your taper

A static taper chart has no idea how much load you actually carried or how you are recovering. Summit Line reads your real training, then builds the taper right into your plan: the right length for your distance, a fast-decay volume curve off YOUR peak week, a couple of sharpening efforts kept in, and your last long run placed for you. You just run what the day says and show up fresh.

Build my plan free →See it on a real plan

Keep reading

The taper caps off a long build. These guides cover the rest of it.

Ultra taper FAQ

How long should an ultra taper be?

Match the taper to the distance. Shorter races need less, longer races need more. For a 50K, 7 to 14 days is plenty. For a 50 miler, figure 10 to 16 days. For a 100K, give it 2 to 3 weeks, and for a 100 miler plan on about 3 weeks, sometimes a touch more. The reason behind the range is simple. The bigger your training load, the more fatigue you have piled up to shed, so the deeper and longer the unload has to be. Jason Koop at CTS treats the taper as basically a slightly longer, slightly deeper de-load week and nothing fancier than that, and he points out that plain old rest does most of the work no matter how perfect your plan looks on paper.

How much should I cut volume each week?

Most coaches go with a fast-decay curve instead of a slow, even ramp-down. A common model for a three-week taper is to run about 40 to 50 percent of your normal weekly volume in the first taper week, 20 to 30 percent in the second, and under 20 percent in race week. In real terms that means cutting roughly 25 to 40 percent off your peak week first, then dropping to about half, then to under a third of peak by race week. The whole idea is to drop volume hard and early so the fatigue clears, then hold a low, sharp level into the start. Nibble a few miles off each week and you just show up tired.

Should I keep any intensity during the taper?

Yes, keep a little. The rule coaches keep repeating is to cut the volume of intensity, not the type of it. Run fewer and shorter hard segments, but run them at the same effort and pace you trained at, so your legs stay sharp and you do not go flat. Say your normal session was four times five minutes at tempo. You might do three times five minutes three weeks out, two times five minutes two weeks out, and one times five minutes plus a few strides in race week. Pull out all the intensity and only jog easy and you show up stale and sluggish on the start line. It happens to people every season.

When is my last long run?

Your last truly long run lands before the taper starts, not during it. For a 50K that is usually about two weeks out, for a 50 miler two to three weeks out, and for a 100K or 100 miler about three to four weeks out. After that peak long run, every long effort gets shorter. You can still do a moderately long run early in the first taper week, but it should be noticeably shorter than your peak, and by the final 7 to 10 days your longest run is just a short, easy effort. The fitness is already in the bank. The last long run is the deposit, and the taper is what lets it clear.

How does the taper differ for a 50K vs a 100 miler?

A 50K is close to a marathon, so it only needs a short, light taper of roughly 7 to 14 days, your peak long run about two weeks out, and a modest volume cut. A 100 miler is built on a lot more weekly volume and much longer back-to-back long runs, so it carries deeper fatigue and needs about three weeks of taper, your last big effort three to four weeks out, and a deeper unload. The shape is the same in both. Drop volume early, keep a little intensity, sharpen into the start. The longer race just gets a longer, deeper version of it. The rule of thumb is dead simple: longer race, longer taper.

How do I handle taper anxiety?

Taper anxiety, sometimes called the taper tantrums, is normal and pretty much everybody gets it. As training drops off, your body has spare energy and your mind has spare time, and what you get is phantom aches, restlessness, doubt, and even minor illness symptoms that usually fade in the 24 to 48 hours before the start. The fixes are simple. Trust the work you already put in, because you cannot add fitness in the final two weeks but you can waste it. Point the nervous energy at logistics instead: your gear, drop bags, crew plan, and pacing, not squeezing in extra training. Keep your strides and short efforts so you still feel fast, sleep more, and remember that feeling twitchy and heavy-legged mid-taper is a sign it is working, not failing.

What should I eat during taper week?

Eat the way you have all block, then top up the carbs as the race gets close. Your training volume is dropping, but do not slash calories along with it. You want to refill glycogen, not run a deficit. In the final two to three days, push carbohydrate toward roughly 7 to 10 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, and use familiar food like rice, pasta, potatoes, oats, and bread. And this part matters: do not experiment with new foods, big new portions, or new supplements in taper week. A gut load it has never seen is a fast route to race-morning stomach trouble. Stay well hydrated, keep your sodium normal, and treat taper-week eating as a controlled top-off, not a free-for-all.

Should I rest completely the last few days?

No, do not park yourself on the couch. Total rest for the last several days tends to leave you feeling flat and heavy instead of fresh. Keep moving with short, easy runs of 15 to 40 minutes and a few short strides to keep your legs primed, and take at least one or two real rest days across the final week. You want sharp and rested, not detrained and stiff. A full day off two days before the race plus a very short shakeout the day before is a common pattern that works. Now if something genuinely feels off, a niggle or you are getting sick, that is when extra rest is worth it. But for most runners a little easy movement beats shutting it all down.

This guide is for general training and planning, and it reflects expert-consensus ranges. It is not a substitute for personalized coaching or medical advice. Taper length, volume cuts, and fueling needs vary a lot from runner to runner, so treat the numbers here as starting points and adjust to your own body, your race distance, and how you recover. If you have a health condition, check with a clinician before a big race effort.