Tapering for event this weekend and 3 day event the next.



giannip

New Member
Jul 7, 2005
364
0
0
Hi all. I'm in 2 minds about the next 2 week's training. I have a race on Sunday, one of the hardest of the year, which I'm targeting and also a 3 day / 4 staff race the following week-end. I'm wondering about the best way to prepare for both of these without taking too many easy days which might affect me for the stage race. My plan would be for this week to be the easiest of the two and then maybe pick up the intensity a bit more next week but with less volume. Am I doing this the wrong way around? Any thoughts appreciate. G
 
How much to taper and how to balance workload vs. intensity during your taper should depend a lot on your current training base and what you know about yourself and how you've responded to tapers in the past.

Have you been training regularly all winter and have you built up a substantial training base? If you train with a power meter and track your results in WKO+, what's your current CTL?

In general if you haven't built up a pretty substantial training load then don't taper too much. You'll be fresh but you'll likely go slower than doing a pretty standard training week just backed off a bit in total volume. IMO, if your current CTL is below about 75 I'd train right up to this weekend's event at least and perhaps up the stage race as well. Sure, don't do huge rides or go out and try to set all time records as the races approach but don't back off too much if your base is shallow. In that case I see the best results with a normal week backed off about 10-15% in terms of total workload (TSS) and with the days rearranged if necessary to get a complete rest day two days before the event.

If you've got a deep training base and higher CTL to start then more tapering can be useful to bring on some additional freshness. In that case I'd typically back off a midweek Threshold day to Tempo, take an extra light spin or complete rest day and skip any midweek training races or intense interval sessions at least to prep for the one day race. The other classic approach is to swap a shorter but intense short interval session for longer more sustained work. You still want less session TSS but a lot of riders respond really well to some short punchy L6 work to keep some intensity while overall getting more rest and burning through less glycogen than you might on longer training rides. If you do taper for the one day road race then I'd try to do some of this shorter punchy work in week two to keep your legs used to some hard riding but in such a way that you're still getting some extra rest relative to your normal workload as the stage race approaches.

BTW, conventional wisdom on tapers is to taper more for short punchy races like crits and track events where freshness is key. Taper less for longer races where fitness is key. Tapering basically trades a bit of fitness for additional freshness as you move away from your core training. It's usually a good tradeoff for folks that are sustaining big training loads as they're carrying a lot of residual fatigue but not such a great deal for folks with less base that have less day in, day out fatigue to rebound from. So don't simply take a lot of days off the bike, especially if your CTL isn't all that high for the kind of racing you're talking about.

Good luck,
-Dave
 
:D thanks so much for the detailed reply. In feel a bit silly now. My very first thoughts a few weeks ago was to just keep training as permusual because I had lost 2 weeks due to illness and I knew my CTL would be lower than I wanted. It's currently at 70, so that would definitely confirm your suggestion. I typically have Monday / Friday off so there's no chance of overdoing it and I would prefer to keep at it for my main targets later in the year. Thanks again for the helpd & confirming my initial gut feeling. Just need to listen to it next time :)