Race Week: The 7 Days Before Your Race

You cannot build fitness in race week — but you can destroy plenty of it. The seven days before the start decide whether you can actually access your form on race day or whether you stand on the start line with heavy legs. The plan for this week follows one rule: shed fatigue without losing sharpness.

Why race week matters more than the last hard session

Training stimuli work with a delay. What you ran four weeks before the race built your form; what you run in race week has practically no influence on it. The body is busy repairing in this phase: glycogen stores refill, micro-damage in the muscles is cleared, the autonomic nervous system settles down. Every additional load competes with exactly those processes.

At the same time the week must not turn into a blank. Anyone who stops completely for seven days loses neuromuscular timing: the legs feel heavy and foreign on race day, cadence is off, the pace feels unfamiliar. The narrow path is: cut volume clearly, keep intensity in small doses. In training theory this phase is called tapering — race week is its last and most sensitive part.

How much to cut depends on distance and prior load. As a guide: weekly volume drops to 60 to 70 percent of the peak, the number of sessions to three or four, the longest session to 45 to 60 minutes. For a marathon the reduction is bigger than for a 10K, and for an ultra with high prior load bigger still.

The day-by-day race week plan

A concrete example for a marathon on Sunday. The structure transfers to half marathon, triathlon and gran fondo — only the doses change:

• Monday (T−6): Rest day or 30 minutes of easy movement with no heart rate target. The last long run was two days ago; the decline starts now. No strength training, no stretching routine with new exercises.
• Tuesday (T−5): 45 easy minutes in the base zone, then 4 strides over 80 metres. Strides are not training but a nervous system check: they keep coordination awake without creating fatigue.
• Wednesday (T−4): The last activation with race pace. 15 minutes warm-up, then 3 × 1,000 metres at goal pace with 2 minutes jog recovery, then 10 minutes cool-down. Around 50 minutes in total. This is the most important session of the week.
• Thursday (T−3): Rest day. Carb loading starts today, fibre intake drops at the same time. No session that makes you tired — a walk instead of a run.
• Friday (T−2): 30 very easy minutes plus 3 strides. Shorter and calmer than Wednesday. Add the organisational work: race pack, travel, race day kit laid out.
• Saturday (T−1): 20 to 25 easy minutes with 2 to 3 short strides, in the morning. Nothing athletic after that. Carbohydrate-focused meals, early dinner, no new foods.
• Sunday (race day): Breakfast 2.5 to 3 hours before the start, warm-up 60 to 90 minutes before. No stretching, no testing new gels — only what worked in preparation.

This distribution is not a rigid template but the pattern behind it: one last activation four to five days out, then maintenance only. Put the activation two days out and you risk heavy legs on race day; drop it entirely and you risk no longer hitting race pace.

Carb loading: what actually helps in the last three days

The idea behind carb loading is simple: glycogen stores in liver and muscles hold limited energy, and filling them maximally before the start means more available later in the race. The classic route via a depletion phase followed by a feast is outdated — it makes you tired, moody and causes stomach problems for many. The current approach skips depletion:

• Marathon and longer: From T−3, 8 to 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight per day. At 70 kilograms that is 560 to 700 grams — roughly 800 to 1,000 grams of cooked rice plus drinks and snacks.
• Half marathon: From T−2 increase to 7 to 8 grams per kilogram. The effect is smaller than for a marathon but measurable.
• 10K and shorter: No targeted carb loading needed. Normal carbohydrate-focused meals are enough.
• Triathlon and gran fondo: As for marathon, plus attention to fluid and sodium — the higher carbohydrate intake binds water.

The flip side matters: weight goes up with carbohydrate intake. Each gram of glycogen binds about three grams of water, so two to three kilograms of gain in the final days is normal and no reason to panic. Also normal in this phase: a sluggish gut if fibre stays high. That is why fibre and fat drop from T−2 — not for dietary philosophy but to unburden the digestive system.

The rule above all others: familiar foods only. Race week is the worst possible time to try a new sports drink, a new bar or a restaurant dish. One stomach problem on race day costs more time than any nutrition optimisation gains.

The final 24 hours

The day before the race is a logistics day, not a training day. Four things count:

• Race pack and travel: Bib, chip, schedule, parking or train connection sorted the day before. Anyone searching for the start area for the first time on race morning loses nerves and time.
• Lay out the kit: Jersey, shorts, socks, shoes, watch, gels, bottle, rain jacket, change of clothes. All in one place, not across three bags. The full list is in the race day checklist.
• Food: Carbohydrate-focused, low fat, early in the evening. Pasta with a light sauce, rice with vegetables or potatoes work well — normal portions, not more than usual.
• Sleep: The sleep two nights before the race matters more than the night immediately before. The night before the start is restless for almost everyone — that is normal and not a performance problem.

If you treat the night before the race as critical, the details are in Sleep before a race. Short version: going to bed early achieves little if you then lie awake for two hours. Keep your usual bedtime instead.

The five most common race week mistakes

• Too much volume: The classic. Out of insecurity the week is not reduced but run like any other. Result: heavy legs from kilometre five.
• Panic training: One more tempo run two days out "to check". It builds no fitness, only a 48-hour recovery deficit.
• New gear: New shoes, new shorts, new gels. Anything unfamiliar does not belong in race week but in the dress rehearsal weeks earlier.
• Too much carb loading: Double portions plus sports drinks plus sweets lead to bloating and digestive trouble. 8 to 10 grams per kilogram is a lot — but not "as much as possible".
• Constant overthinking: The week becomes a mental grind where every detail turns into a risk. A fixed routine takes your head out of the loop.

Ill during race week: what applies now

The decision follows one simple line: symptoms above the neck — a head cold, mild scratchy throat, no fever — usually allow a start at reduced ambition. Fever, aching limbs, a cough from the lungs or gastrointestinal trouble argue against it. The reason is not caution at any price but physiology: an infection plus race distance means a clearly elevated risk of a more severe course in an already stressed immune system.

In practice: decide early, not the evening before. Anyone hoping until the last day keeps training through race week and delays recovery. If the A race falls through, a B race four to six weeks later is a better answer than starting at half strength — form does not disappear in that window.

How Peakora plans race week

In the Peakora engine race week is not a separate plan but the result of tapering logic: starting from the A race and your current load, the plan calculates how much volume and intensity drop in the final seven days. The activation session is placed automatically four to five days before the start, volume is reduced into the target corridor. Because control runs on TSS and TSB, you can see in the plan whether you are in the rising-form zone or still shedding fatigue.

That removes the most common uncertainty of this week: whether you are doing too much or too little. The plan knows your prior load and your target race — you do not have to estimate how much reduction is appropriate. For the fundamentals of periodisation, tapering and peaking, the Peakora homepage is the place to start; individual terms such as TSB and TSS are explained in the German-language Peakora glossary.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading: Tapering: the final 14 days before a race, Carb loading: the right protocol and Peaking and form build-up.