When to Stop Lifting Before Your Marathon

Miles: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Full Spectrum Fit. Amara, how'd training go this week? Amara: Honestly, my hamstrings hate me. 16-mile Saturday and my pace fell off worse than I wanted. Miles: Classic lifter turned runner problem. Amara: Exactly. Miles: Good news, my easy runs actually felt smooth for once. Amara: Same, once the soreness faded. Okay, switching gears. Fall marathon season is basically here. Miles: Yeah, The5krunner published a piece on July 23rd pointing out there's still four marathon majors left on the 2026 calendar. Amara: Four majors still to go? That's a packed fall. Miles: It is, and that's got us thinking about taper season. Whats actually happening in your body when you back off before race day? Amara: Were breaking down peak week, taper, and supercompensation, and Ive got questions about whether the taper research holds up once real training log damage enters the picture. Miles: Here we go again. Amara: Somebodys got to keep you honest. Miles: Fair. Were also tackling when lifters turned runners should actually stop lifting before race day. Amara: Because stop lifting a month out is bad advice. Miles: Bad advice. Later, taper nutrition, why heavy legs during taper are normal, and Hyroxs expanded race calendar. Amara: Two million athletes are expected to compete this season apparently. Miles: Two million. Alright, lets talk about what your legs are actually doing this week. Amara: Ready when you are. Miles: So my left hip flexor is filing a formal complaint after Sundays long run. Amara: How long are we talking? Miles: Eighteen miles. Felt strong through fifteen, then it just locked up. Amara: Classic. Meanwhile, I deadlifted Tuesday and my hamstrings are still yelling at me in the shower. Miles: See, this is why I keep saying lifting and marathon training don't always play nice. Amara: They can. You're just not warming up right. Miles: Debatable. Anyway, good week overall, just creaky. Amara: Same creaky but on track, which, by the way, matters a lot right now. Miles: Because the calendar just got loud. Amara: Give me the dates. Miles: Berlin lands Sunday, September 27th, Chicago's October 11th, and New York's November 1st. Amara: That's not far off at all. Miles: Right? Depending which race you're running, you're somewhere between 8 and 13 weeks out. Today. Right now. Amara: So if you're one of our listeners who signed up. Signed up back in the spring feeling invincible. Miles: Welcome to the part where it gets real. Amara: According to the 5K Runner's piece from July 23rd, four of the Abbott World Marathon Majors are still left this year with Tokyo, Boston, and London already done. Miles: And that spring block, by the way, was absurd, but that's a story for another day. Amara: Is it, though? You clearly want to talk about it. Miles: Fine—five seconds! The times coming out of London were the fastest we've ever seen. Amara: Okay, noted, Filed, Moving on. Miles: So, Sequel time: we did the Marathon Meets Leg Day episode back in May. Amara: Right, all the fun stuff-Zone Two, Lifting, how to not hate your life. Miles: This one's narrower: we're zooming into Peak Weeks and Taper because that's exactly where everyone listening sits right now. Speaker 3: Now. Amara: Which raises the actual question: when your legs feel like mine do today, is that Peaking working or is that just damage? Miles: That's the debate. Let's find out which one of us is right. Building on that panic we just laughed about, let's talk about where people actually sit in the calendar right now. Amara: Okay, so peak week. Everybody thinks it's just the hardest week, and then you coast into the finish. Wait for it. Not quite. Miles: Right, and I've seen this with athletes in my groups. Peak week is that final stress dose, but the taper is when the body actually caches in the fitness you built. That super compensation is real, but only if you set it up right. Amara: Exactly! Super compensation-fancy word, simple idea: you break the body down, back off the load, and boom, it rebounds stronger than before the stress. Miles: Sounds like my fridge after Thanksgiving. Amara: Sure, if leftovers made you faster. But here's the scale of who's doing this taper right now: Miles: Hit me. Amara: Plot twist on the numbers here: New Speaker 4: - Amara: New York Road Runners reportedly pulled in over 240,000 draw applications for one race. Chicago drew north of 200,000 for around 53,000 finishing spots. Miles: Wait, 200,000 applications for 53,000 spots? Amara: Yeah, most people reading this are literally tapering inside an incredibly crowded, incredibly anxious field right now. Miles: No wonder I'm getting texts from runners at two a.m. asking if they should adjust their paces. Everyone's anxious, and rightfully so—the numbers are brutal. Amara: And here's the research angle: Smyth and Lawlor, published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living in twenty twenty-one, looked at roughly a hundred and fifty-eight thousand recreational runners. Miles: What would they find? Amara: A disciplined three-week taper linked to a median f You can finish time saving near five and a half minutes compared to a minimal taper, and that's not nothing. Miles: It's real, but I'll be direct. Most amateurs I've worked with never get a clean shot at that taper because they compromise it weeks before taper even starts. The damage is already done by week 15. Amara: How so? Miles: Because they blow up the peak long run. I've reviewed hundreds of training logs and it's the same story. same story every time. Guys are hitting 20 miles two weeks out while they're already nursing something. An IT band, shin splints, hip flexor tightness. Amara: Exactly right. So the taper's irrelevant if the fitness underneath is already cracked. You can't fix September in October. Miles: Pretty much the taper doesn't fix bad decisions made in week 14, it just reveals them. Amara: Brutal, but fair. Miles: I had someone text me a few weeks back saying their taper felt absolutely wrecked. And when I looked back at their data, it wasn't the taper. It was that final long run they ran five seconds per mile too fast. Amara: Right, so the study measures the average runner. It's not measuring the person who trashed their knee in September and never addressed it. Miles: Exactly. Frontiers gives you the population number. Your training log gives you the truth. Amara: Truth Fair split there—research on one side, actual bodies on the other. Miles: And once you know where you sit in that timeline, taper is easy to define but there's a bigger question hanging over it: Amara: Which is? Miles: What happens to the barbell during all this? Do you drop lifting the second taper starts or hold on to it? Amara: Oh, this is where it gets good—that's a fight for the next segment. Miles: Building on that, so when do people actually stop lifting? Not textbook, real world. Amara: Okay, so get this, most runners bail four to eight weeks out, and I'm Miles: Watching it happen constantly in the training logs, that's a full month of maintenance torched for zero payoff on race day. Amara: Seriously, a full month? Miles: A full month, I see the logs. Amara: I see it too. Reviewing training logs, that's exactly what shows up. Week nine hits, everything aches, and the gym visits just stop. Miles: Which is the wrong move. RunnersConnect summarized the detraining research. Strength holds close to baseline through about two weeks off; the real loss shows up closer to week four. Amara: Two weeks, huh? Miles: Pitch twist, bail eight weeks out and you're literally detraining for six of those weeks for nothing! Amara: Here's where I'm skeptical about that number. It's clean on paper, sure, but I've watched the actual logs: runner with dead legs staring down a squat rack in week nine. That's the math that matters. Miles: Here's the thing-feel and physiology aren't the same thing, but physiology is what shows up on the start line. Amara: Fine. Give me the actual week-by-week, then. Miles: Two sessions through peak week-same loads you've used all summer. Taper week one-drop to one session, cut the volume hard-keep the weight. Amara: Keep it, not lighten it? Miles: Keep it, and this is where it gets good. Mujika and Padilla's research, which the shift to strength taper guide cited, shows VO2max can actually drop four to six percent within two to four weeks of reduced training. Cut intensity along with volume and you lose ground on both fronts. Amara: Four to six percent is nothing. Miles: It's not, so the mistake isn't lifting less, it's going lighter and less. Yes, at the same time. Amara: Walk me through the final stretch. Miles: Taper week two: one short session five or six days out, then stop. Amara: Nothing the last four or five days? Miles: Nothing let the legs come back. Amara: I can sell that protocol. What I can't sell is trusting a two week number to someone I'm coaching who limps into week nine because their twenty miler went sideways, happens every single cycle. Miles: There's your favorite argument again! Amara: Because it's true-most of the damage happened weeks before anyone even thinks about lifting. Miles: Sure, but that's a reason to fix the long run, not to just bail on lifting early out of habit. Amara: Fair enough. Miles: So two sessions through peak, one in taper, done four or five days out. Amara: And that frees up recovery capacity too; less time under the bar means more energy for everything else. Miles: Oh, this is where it gets good, which opens up the fueling and sleep questions nobody actually plans for. Amara: Oh, the taper appetite thing is real; I texted an athlete about this last week, actually. They're eating like they're still running eighty miles a week when they've dropped to twenty; the math doesn't compute. Miles: And the anxiety that comes with feeling sluggish while doing less, that's coming up! Amara: So with that recovery capacity freed up, the real fight becomes what you're actually eating. Please no more carb load horror stories. My stomach still remembers 2019. I learned the hard way that loading doesn't mean doubling pasta at 10pm. Miles: This one's subtler. Volume's dropping, but your glycogen stores still need topping off and appetite doesn't always cooperate. Amara: Because you're not burning 18 miles a week. weak anymore, so you're just not hungry. I've watched so many athletes convince themselves they're broken because their appetite suddenly makes biological sense. Miles: Right. The personal trainer taper guide from Shift to Strength flags exactly that. Glycogen loading has to stay intentional even as mileage drops. Amara: And protein? Miles: Stays high. You banked strength all summer lifting. Don't starve that muscle. Amara: Interesting. What about hydration since you're not sweating? WEEDING THROUGH SIX MILE EFFORTS ANYMORE. Miles: Electrolyte needs actually drop with volume, but a lot of runners keep chugging sports drink out of habit and just get bloated. Amara: Ha ha ha! Guilty! By day seven I've turned into a walking Gatorade ad. Which, Plot twist, is exactly why I show up to the start line bloated the first two miles. Miles: Okay, your actual confession now. Amara: I mean every single taper, day nine hits and I'm convinced my legs have filed for retirement and I'll text someone panicked and they're like, that's literally normal. Miles: Heavy legs in taper week are completely normal. Fluid and glycogen Speaker 4: stores are all full. Miles: Can glycogen shifts settle in? Your fitness didn't go anywhere. Amara: Tell that to my brain at 6 a.m. Miles: Sleep is the real training session you've got left. Growth hormone, tissue repair, none of that stops just because miles did. Amara: That one I believe. I actually do sleep better during taper, probably because my nervous system finally stops screaming and my cortisol actually bottoms out for once. Miles: Exactly the point. Amara: The mental side's brutal though. Three weeks of doing less while feeling worse, and that's when someone I'm coaching inevitably panics and adds stuff. And I mean stuff. Miles: Add stuff. Amara: Random health sprints just to feel it 10 miler the week before? I've had to talk athletes off that ledge more times than I can count. Miles: What's the tell when someone's about to do it? Amara: They start saying they're just testing their legs. I've talked enough people down from that one to know testing three days out ends the same way, blunted race day. Miles: That's a good one. Amara: Short strides work better. Race-pace pickups. Four times a hundred meters, fast, done. Reminds your legs what fast feels like without wrecking them. Miles: And remind your brain you're not broken. Amara: Right. Sharpness comes back in five minutes, not five miles. Miles: Playing fully. Which is good because apparently some people handle taper restlessness. by signing up for a Hyrox mid block. Amara: Oh, no, no, no, no! Miles: Boxrox reported Hyrox as expanding to two million athletes across a hundred and seven race weekends for the twenty twenty-six twenty twenty-seven season. Amara: Surprised, laughing) A hundred and seven? Okay, so there's definitely opportunity for bad decisions. Miles: One hundred and seven. Plenty of dates; none of them belong three weeks before your marathon. Speaker 3: That Hyrox tease from earlier turns out the numbers are wild. Miles: Right. Boxrox broke it down this week: 107 race weekends, 6 continents. Speaker 3: Six continents! That's basically everywhere but Antarctica. Miles: Give it time. 2 million athletes expected for the 26-27 season. Speaker 3: Up from over a million and a half this past year. Miles: And Boxrox says some markets are stretching into ten day residencies now, instead of just a weekend. Speaker 3: Ten days; that's not a race, that's a festival. Miles: Rox Lyfe reported new host cities too: San Diego, Portland, Bari, Nagoya. Nagoya? Amara: Nagoya is interesting; season runs through the spring, right? Miles: Athletech News says it ends at the Hong Kong World Championships in June twenty seventh. Amara: Okay, but here's my worry: more races means more temptation to squeeze one in mid taper. Miles: Don't. Sequences—don't stack. There's a Hyrox weekend almost every month now, you don't need this one. Amara: Okay, give me the three lines. What do people actually do this week? Miles: Two lifts through peak week, same weight, less volume. Amara: One lifts during taper (light, just to keep the signal on). Gym's closed Miles: four days out, no exceptions. Amara: And after the race? Miles: Rebuild strength from week one. Amara: Right. Miles: Don't wait for it to come back by itself. Amara: Two lifts, one lift, four days dark, then rebuilt. Miles: That's the whole plan. Amara: Go run your race; we'll be here when the legs come back. Okay, so if there's one thing to carry out of today, strength training and tapering aren't enemies—lighten the volume, not the load. Miles: Right. And don't panic add a Hyrox week in mid taper just because BOXROX says the calendar's exploding. Save it for after. Amara: Guilty of wanting to sign up on the spot. Miles: Heavy legs, bad sleep during taper week—normal, not a red flag. Amara: Exactly—trust the plan you built in week fourteen. Miles: All right, that's it for us today. Amara: Got a blind spot in your own training you want us to dig into? Miles: Drop it in the reviews or tag us at Full Spectrum Fit. We read everything. Amara: New episodes every Tuesday, so we'll see you right back here. Miles: Rest up, taper smart, and we'll catch you next week. Amara: Bye, everyone.