Runners don't always need to taper. This is not an A race. For A races: cut volume, keep the intensity.

The taper got sold to runners as a ritual you owe every start line. It is not. It is a tool with a cost, and you spend it where it pays.

The physiology is simple. Fitness decays slowly, fatigue decays fast. Back off for one to two weeks and the tiredness drains out before the fitness does, and you race on the difference. The meta-analysis math says the effective version cuts training volume roughly 40 to 60 percent while holding intensity and frequency. Keep touching speed. Just less of everything around it.

But racing twelve ultras in a year means most starts are B and C races, and a real taper before every one would gut the training year. So I raced a mid-June ultra straight off a 113 mile week and took 2nd of 161. The race becomes the workout.

The A races are different. Those get the full drop, because that is the day the fitness is for. Decide which kind of race you are standing at before you decide how to arrive at it.