Your training plan, built from the runs you already did.

How it works

Four steps, then it runs itself

And since August

The parts that are not the plan

A plan is what you came for. These are what make the week around it work, and they all read the same running.

• Recovery and readinessSleep and resting heart rate from your watch, read against your own baseline, so a hard session lands on a day that can take it. Wear two watches and you choose which one it reads.
• Club nightsTell Taper which night you run with the club and the plan builds around it, instead of asking you to choose.
• MilestonesWhat you have actually banked, off your own history - and the next barrier, with how far off it you are.
• ShoesYour Strava pairs, the distance on each, and a nudge when one is near the end of its life.
• A Monday recapOne email: what the week held, what it added up to, and what is coming. It says only what it counted.
• RemindersAn optional push on the morning of a session, at a time you choose, with nothing to install beyond the app.
• Screenshot importA photo of a club session card reads straight into a workout, in the browser, without the image leaving your phone.
• Race weekFor the last seven days Home leads with the countdown to the race and keeps your recovery figures in view, so the week reads as the taper it is. Once the race is run, it gives your result against the target and the easy days still to come.
• A taper you can trySee what a shorter or longer taper does to your predicted time, as a range, before you change the plan.
• Race day planTarget splits that bend around the course's climbs, or your own pace plan from a workout you saved, drawn over the course and sent to your watch with the race.
• Your prediction over timeHow your predicted race time has moved over three, six or twelve months, with the races that tested it beside the line.
• Races to gradeRuns that look like races but never reached your race calendar wait in one list. Say how each one went and it joins the calendar.
• Your plan in your calendarA private feed for Google or Apple Calendar, so the sessions sit next to the rest of your week.
• Cards to shareYour prediction, a personal best or your year as an image, with the numbers the app worked out and nothing invented.

One session, start to finish

Did you do the run you were asked to do?

Any app can chart a run. Taper knows which run it was meant to be. Twelve 400s off one example athlete's plan, matched rep by rep against the target they were given. Tap through.

Your shape, measured

The curve your own running draws

Every fast stretch you have run, plotted against how far it was. Taper fits your curve rather than a textbook one, and stops it where your evidence stops. Tap a point.

And the quieter one that matters more day to day: how fast you run at the same easy effort. Same heart rate, seven weeks apart.

Thirteen seconds a kilometre at an unchanged heart rate. That is fitness arriving, and it is invisible on a page that shows only race times. These charts are one example athlete's, not yours.

Honest numbers

Every number says where it came from

A race you ran, a modelled estimate and a guess are three different things, and Taper labels them differently:

Predictions you can argue with

It shows its working

Every session in your plan says why it is there, every run is read against what it asked of you, and every number names the run behind it. There is no black box and no AI deciding your plan. Every pace in your plan comes from one number, your threshold, and the app shows you which of your own runs set it and when. The method is fixed, drawn from the coaching literature, and every input it used is on the screen. The same runner looks different depending on how far back you are willing to look, and an app that hides the window is hiding the caveat. If you want AI, connect your own Claude or ChatGPT: it reads your plan and your runs to answer a question, and it changes nothing until you say yes.

Your season

The whole block, through to the taper

Your plan is generated around your goal race from your training history, then rebalanced when life happens, and the long run grows only as fast as your evidence does. Then the part the app is named for: the taper, built from the coaching literature and scaled to your race and your recent training. Tap a week.

After every run

A coach's read, not a grade

Each session gets a short, honest read: what was asked, what happened, and the one thing to change next time. When a run costs you the next session, Taper says so and offers the swap that fixes it.

5k to marathon, and the parkrun in between

From your Saturday parkrun to race day

Taper coaches every road distance - 5k, 10k, half and marathon - off the same honest reading of your running. And it speaks parkrun: connect your results and a parkrun becomes a session in the plan, your 5k clock a checkpoint on the way to the goal. The one run most UK runners already do, put to work.

Get Taper

On your phone, or in any browser

Taper is an Android app on Google Play, and the same Taper runs in the browser. Your account and your training are the same either way, so you can sign in on a laptop and carry it in your pocket.

On an iPhone, open taperapp.co.uk in Safari, tap the share button, then Add to Home Screen. It opens full screen with its own icon, the same as an app.

There is no App Store app yet.