The (in) sense of tapering?

Hello everybody,

the vacation is over since today, it was just wonderful. I haven't lazed that much in months. Unfortunately, all of the books weren't enough. Three days before going home I had already done everything. So next time the city library can dress warmly, because then I'll take a whole shelf from the SciFi corner with me 😉

In the meantime I am so recovered that I got sick yesterday. So now I'm sitting here, tanned from all the sun, sipping hot tea. As soon as the training starts again, it is guaranteed to get better. Strangely, I only get sick when I am resting.

That brings me to my topic today, the meaning of tapering. After going over the competition in Roth in my head while on vacation. The performance of my buddy Steffen came to mind in particular. The competition was on Sunday, on the Wednesday evening before the race I called Steffen and told him that he could still start for the Arndt team. That gave him Thursday, Friday and Saturday to relax for Challenge Roth. By Wednesday evening he had trained unsuspectingly and fully. For Steffen that means track training, 3-hour runs and 8-hour bike rides !! In addition, the weekend before a double start, once on Saturday at the Bamberg Triathlon and on Sunday in the league ... phew

Apart from the fact that he had sent his Neo in for repair the day before and there were no longer any competition pants and his friends had to lend him pants and Neo, he completed the Challenge Roth in 8:32. Clearly, a bombshell time!
But this seems absolutely unbelievable when you consider it whole three days has rested for it !!!

Why tap? ... let's all train until shortly before and then we go to the start and see what comes out of it 🙂

Maybe Steffen is an exception, but I can't quite believe it. Perhaps tapering, ie resting before the competition, has been completely overestimated up to now.
Because it is clear that with a 2-3 week taper phase you will always be more rested, but at the same time of course you will slowly flute your shape. Therefore, tapering phases that are too long are counterproductive. You should make the length of tapering dependent on the regular amount of training. So if you train 6-8 hours a week, you don't really need to tread, just rest a few days beforehand. The loss of shape would simply be too great here.
It looks different with those who train extreme extents. The six-time Hawaiian winner Mark Allen always propagated his 4-week taper phase. But hey, if you train regularly 40 hours a week like him, then tapern means that you train “only” 30 hours in the first week, 20 hours in the second week and 10 hours in the last week!

But Steffen also trains quite a lot, so what could be the reason?
From my experience in late spring of this year I can perhaps explain it to myself.

At the end of May I went through an absolute peak of my performance, especially when running, a few weeks before that I was in the training camp in Lanzarote, this should explain the early jump in performance. At 155 pulse (my Ironman competition pulse) I ran a smooth 4:00 cut on the kilometer. It was hardly exhausting. In these 2-3 weeks I could have run a 34 10km run at any time after a day off. And who knows, after a few days more rest I could probably have done a good Ironman too? Unfortunately, I don't know exactly because I haven't tried it 😉

So it probably depends on the exact timing, if you are in such a high phase shortly before the main competition, then you can apparently risk a very short taper phase.
This autumn it will be time for me to try it out!

You will almost certainly recognize a high phase after it is over, namely when the exhaustion slowly increases and the training becomes strenuous again;)))

In my opinion, acute signs that you are in the thick of it are the following:
You feel great, the training is fun because you set a new record every training session.
You are ready and hot for competitions.
You feel invulnerable, every day you could be given more to train and you would have no problem with it.
You think, "It can still be done faster!" 🙂

But just the last point is the Achilles verse of the whole. You always expect more, ie run even faster or do a few more intervals, every training session with your buddies becomes an elimination race, whereby you usually have the lead here, of course 🙂

But then suddenly, almost from one day to the next, it becomes too much for the body and it is over. So remember that it usually only goes well for 2-3 weeks. So if you notice, for example, that the form is there too early, then quickly do a few competitions to set new personal records. Then build in a regeneration week and go back to a few weeks of basic training before you provoke top form again.
You should now know how to do this :))
Just pull out the training diary and see what you trained the first time.

Well, I'll call Steffen today and ask him about "his secret" 😉

skin in!
krelli