This week I noticed that my training time dropped a bit. Not only was I taking one more rest day during the week, but I also was doing fewer repeats when I was on the bike. I dropped an email to my coach, “Am I in the taper?” His reply was the affirmative.

So, what is it? Why should I do it? Is this really going to make a difference?

Tapering is when you ease the stress of your training before a specific event. This is something that I have heard about since I started racing. However, I can’t say I have always understood it or practiced it.

Interestingly, the taper is only as important as the training you have been putting in. Basically the idea is that you have brought yourself to the highest level of fitness you could. You reach a point before the event where to continue the stress of training may create more fitness, but the trade-off in the lack of freshness isn’t worth it.

The taper is the way to hang on to the fitness you have built while refreshing the body. The ultimate goal is that by race day you will have the ultimate equation — Fitness + Freshness = Form.

In the past, I have practiced a mini-version of this. I typically rode with no training in mind — just my normal hard group rides with the guys along with the Tuesday Night World Championships. Then I went into a three day taper: day 1 – hard effort, day2 – off the bike, and day 3 – easy spin. Then it was time to race.

Looking back, I see that was somewhat in vain. Why? Well, first of all, a taper is only as good as the fitness you bring to it. You are not going to increase your fitness with a taper. Also, the period of rest after that initial hard effort probably wasn’t sufficient to give me the best equation for success.

Coach has me following a two week taper. Again, that doesn’t mean that I am off the bike for the two weeks. As a matter of fact, last night I had a workout with some pretty intense efforts! The difference was that there were only about half the number of intense efforts than the same workout at week ago.

My brain argues with that. “I’m losing fitness!” it cries. The temptation is to push myself to test my fitness. That leads us to one of the keys to a successful taper…

Trust.

That is one thing I have this year. I trust that my coach has gotten me to the best possible position for my fitness. I know I have followed the plan as best I could. I say “best I could” because both coach and I know that I have not reached the level of fitness we had hoped for at this time. The odd winter has played a role in that. Of course, everyone else it pretty much in the same boat.

However, I know going into this taper period that I have Fitness. I can focus on the Freshness part of the equation without feeling the need to squeeze for more strength. I also have  trust in my coach. If he tells me that tapering is good for my success, then I’m tapering.

I must admit. There is one thing in which I have yet to build confidence. Just exactly what difference will this exercise of tapering make in my performance? I’m hoping that I haven’t built this up too much in my mind. Will it be something that when I’m out there I’ll obviously feel it, or will it be more subtle? That is what makes all of this fun. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Until then, I’m tapering.

 

Tags: Taper

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 8:36 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.