The two weeks before race day matter more than most runners think

The taper exists to let the body absorb months of accumulated training stress before race day, and most runners get the shape of it wrong in one of two directions.

Cut volume too sharply and too fast, and the legs feel flat and heavy on race morning — a common complaint that has nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with abruptly removing a training stimulus the body had adapted to relying on.

Cut it too little, and residual fatigue simply never clears. The evidence consistently favors a gradual reduction in volume while keeping some intensity in the mix — not rest, exactly, but a controlled unwinding.