Last Updated on 17 September 2026:
You’ve grafted all year, potentially longer, for your most important cycling event. Then, just as it is time to reduce the work and bring everything together, cycling taper tantrums can make it surprisingly difficult to train less. This blog explains what tapering is, why it matters and how to cope with the urge to keep training.
Covered in this blog
- What is tapering?
- How long should you taper for?
- Why bother tapering?
- What would you do for an additional 5-6% performance?
- How to design your own taper
- Why don’t we taper into every event?
- What are taper tantrums?
- How to avoid taper tantrums
- Examples of techniques to make tapering more easy
- Replacements to training
- Distraction techniques
What is tapering?
Tapering is the decrease in training load (volume multiplied by intensity) immediately after your final block of training and before your main event.
How long should you taper for?
There’s no right answer to this as it is highly individual, but I have some advice that will help. If your training load has been fairly easy to complete, maybe you’re time strapped and you’re not feeling that fatigued during the final week of your final block of training, you probably don’t need that much of a taper.
A taper can be anything from a day or two, to three weeks. If you’ve been training for an Ironman triathlon or Race Across America, you might consider a long taper. If you’re doing something multi-day, it is almost always better to come into the event undertrained (with a little reversibility from low training load) than it is overtrained.
Either way, you’ll probably experience the dreaded cycling taper tantrums at some point in this period…
Why bother tapering?
A well designed and executed taper could potentially give you an additional 5-6% in performance on the day of your event.
What would you do for an additional 5-6% performance?
Bad things, right…? Even power through the cycling taper tantrums…?
How to design your own taper
It’s not easy, a coach would be a great place to start, but it is possible, if a little time consuming and risky, to do on your own.
Firstly, there are a couple of time periods during your training year that are ideal to test out a taper. The first would be the events that you don’t care too much about; weekly races or sportives that are more for fun. The second would be your easier weeks; the weeks in your training that are reserved especially for recovery. These weeks are frequent and so give you a regular opportunity to test some different scenarios.
As the name suggests, these weeks are only a week long (duh!), so how would you know if you need longer than a week? First, let’s see how you do with a test event at the end of each easier week. Keep that test repeatable and then try out a different variety of sessions the week leading to the test. You can try having an aggressive taper which almost stops training. You could try a far less aggressive taper and see how you perform. You’ve got 6 days (the 7th is test day) to do something different, so many possibilities.
Once you’re fairly confident that what you have works well for your minor events or regular testing, it’s now time to test it out on something a little more important; not your main event, but something that means a little more to you.
Armed with your ideal taper, how you performed on test day (did you get a nice 5-6% boost?) and your knowledge of the difference in load from your normal block of training and the last block before this moderately important event, you should be able to tell if you need a little more time. You might not need to double the taper you’ve planned the first time, perhaps trying just 10 days and seeing how you perform.
If the load is fairly similar between your testing and this moderately important event, you should be able to tell if your body needed that extra time. Of course, there are other influences that could have caused a difference in performance on this event, but do your best to marry objective and subjective measures to tell if you performed better (or worse) because you were fresher (or more undertrained).
Why don’t we taper into every event?
Clients often ask me why we wouldn’t just do a taper into every cycling event during their normal training year. Tapering is in essence undertraining your body. Of course, you want this for your main event as you’re also peaking, but too many tapers in a year and you just aren’t doing enough training to see the stress that needs to taper. Then you get reversibility.
What are the cycling taper tantrums?
I honestly can’t remember which of my clients used this phrase first, but thank you to whomever it was!
Taper tantrums are simply the frustrations that come with training less as you approach the event. Some people might feel great reaching their taper, like relief they are almost done, but there are many people who struggle to not train.
For the people who can’t scratch that itch, what do they do?
How to avoid the cycling taper tantrums
If we consider that training is addictive, which it is, and that people who are experiencing this issue are just craving their fix, then we should look at treating taper tantrums like many other withdrawals.
Ultimately, this might just come down to replacing the addiction with something else (healthy!) or it could be about using distraction techniques.
Examples of techniques to make cycling taper tantrums more easy
Let’s split this into the two categories I describe above.
Training replacements
- If you have to be moving, try light walks – remember you aren’t stopping training, but reducing it
- Meditation
- Family time; earn yourself some kudos (which might be used during your main event) and be with family
Distraction Techniques
- Watching professional cycling or your local races
- Learn something new (study training methodology or this study: Effects of tapering on performance in endurance athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis)
- Read a book
- Honestly, this list is easy and endless, you could probably add some yourself that you love, such as other hobbies
Summary
Like all aspects of training, tapering gets easier when you practise it before your main event and learn what works for you. If you would like help planning your taper, Book a Free Consultation.
