Tapering for Seoul
April 30th, 2010 by Will
Finally I’ve started my first taper for the Seoul World Championships Series. It’s awesome…but what a strange feeling!
I think in a sport like triathlon it’s especially difficult to get a taper right. Â You have 3 sports to train for so you always think you should be doing something, but if you do too much you end up not being fresh enough to race to your best. Â If you do to little then you lose the feeling for the sport.
Tapering is such a grey area. Â It’s so personal and everyone treats their taper so differently. Â I know athletes who hardly taper at all because they de-train so quickly and other athletes who pretty much take a two week holiday. Â I will never forget watching Ivan Rana taper before the Olympics! We were about two weeks out and he was basically just tipping his toes in the water and spinning down to the shops on the bike!
It’s a nice feeling to super-compensate, sitting on the coach watching TV and generally being lazy. Â It’s a strange concept that you are doing so much less then usual but actually getting fitter as your body absorbs all the hard work. It took me a few years to get my head around that!
Whenever I start backing off my training I instantly start feeling like crap. Â Today I took the afternoon off and I just felt like sleeping through the whole day! So lethargic I almost felt a bit ill!
I said on my twitter today that you never know how tired you are till you stop. Â I went to Iceland recently after a big block of training and I felt terrible for the whole trip…even walking around! Â I think as soon as your head knows that you have a few days off training it takes the opportunity to recover and shuts you down! Â If this taper goes like I expect it to, by Monday I will struggle to even get round a 1hr ride and will probably be moaning at the girls that they are trying to drop me on the bike!
It’s funny, a few days out from the race I’m struggling to get up the stairs after breakfast and I’m thinking. “How am I going to run 30:30 10k after a fast swim and solid bike if I can barely walk up the stairs!”
Sure enough though a day out from the race you start to wake up and you get your head back and all of a sudden your feeling un-stoppable! We are dropping in last minute for Seoul, arriving on the Wednesday before a Saturday race to avoid the jet lag. Will be interesting to see how it compares to going out early and taking the jet lag hit.
| Great weekend of results for Triathlon Team. | In Seoul so far |
