Questions, answered
Getting started
What do I need to use Taper?
An email address and a running history in Garmin, Strava or intervals.icu. Connect any of them (or several) and Taper imports your activities and builds from there. No questionnaire.
Is there an app?
On Android, yes: Taper is on Google Play. On an iPhone, open taperapp.co.uk in Safari, tap the share button and choose Add to Home Screen - it gets its own icon and opens full screen, the same as the Android app. There is no App Store app yet. It is one account either way, so nothing is stranded on one device.
Is Taper free?
Taper is free. There will always be a free tier, so you will never be locked out of your own training history by not paying. Beyond that, what sits in the free tier and what sits in a paid one is still being worked out, so nothing more specific is promised here yet.
What makes Taper different from Garmin or Strava?
Their numbers come from fitness models that tend to be optimistic, especially at longer distances. Taper's come from your own results, and every one is labelled by how sure we are - confirmed, estimated, or not enough data yet. We would rather tell you we do not know than hand you a confident guess.
How does the plan work day to day?
Each session explains itself where you meet it, but there is also one page covering the whole thing: what each type of run is for, how to move, swap or rewrite a session without breaking the plan, what happens after a run, what to do about illness, travel or injury, and what race week does. Five minutes, once.
Predictions and training
How are race predictions made?
From your own best efforts: Taper fits your personal fade curve across your evidenced distances and anchors it to what you have actually run. Beyond your longest evidenced effort, predictions deliberately turn conservative. Every prediction carries a confidence label, and a low label tells you what to do to firm it up.
Why does my prediction differ from Garmin or Strava?
Their numbers come from fitness models (VO2 max estimates); ours come from your results. Fitness models tend to be optimistic, especially at long distances. Taper only claims what your running has shown.
What happens when I miss a week?
The plan rebalances rather than pretending nothing happened. Volume rebuilds at a safe rate from where you actually are.
Can I edit the plan?
Yes. Move, swap, edit or write sessions in plain text; anything Taper is unsure about parsing gets flagged for your confirmation rather than silently guessed.
What do my training zones mean?
Six bands of effort, from recovery running up to flat-out. Your own numbers are in Profile, then Zones, with a note on how well each one is known. What the bands are FOR is the same for everybody: what training in each one does, what it feels like from the inside, and the way each one usually goes wrong.
Do I still need a coach?
Taper does what a good coach does with your data - the plan, the reads after each run, and the taper the app is named for. What it cannot do is know how your life feels this week, or watch you run. Plenty of people use both; Taper makes the numbers side effortless.
Devices and data
Can Taper send workouts to my watch?
Garmin, yes: connect Garmin in Profile and planned sessions are pushed so your watch guides the workout. For COROS, Wahoo, Suunto and most other brands, Taper cannot talk to the watch directly, so it writes to an intervals.icu calendar and your watch picks them up from there - an Apple Watch too, with the intervals.icu companion app on your iPhone. Changing your plan updates that calendar, so a session you delete or move is taken off the watch rather than left behind. Your runs come back in through the same bridge, or through Strava if you already sync there.
How do I connect another device?
Garmin, Strava and intervals.icu are all switched on and off from one table in Profile, then Connections. intervals.icu connects by approving Taper on their site and coming straight back - there is no API key to find or paste. Each connection clears up after itself when you switch it off.
Is Taper's Garmin connection official?
Not currently, and it is worth saying plainly. Garmin has paused approval of new developer API requests while the programme is rebuilt, with no timeline given. Taper has an application on file and will move to the official API the moment it reopens. Until then Taper signs in to Garmin the same way their own website does: your password is used once to authorise us and is never stored, only the resulting tokens are kept, and switching Garmin off deletes them. The practical risk is that Garmin can change how sign-in works at any time and the connection stops until we catch up. If that happens Taper tells you the sync failed rather than quietly showing stale data, and the intervals.icu route still works.
How do I delete my data?
Profile, then the Data tab, at the foot under Danger zone. Reset my data wipes your training data and disconnects every provider, keeping your login and taking you back to onboarding; Delete my account erases everything. You arm either one by typing RESET or DELETE in the box above them, and both are immediate. Your data is yours.