Me Time

Now that the big one is done, it is time for a little me time.

In this case, me time means tapering and getting ready for a paddling race on Sunday.

The race this Sunday is a long distance marathon event, 20km of paddling, which trust me, is a pretty long way on a standup paddle board. It is one of the events on the calendar that I have identified as an A race. The race should be a touch over 2 hours for me if everything goes to plan, so it will be a solid day out.

Given the event on Sunday the focus of this week is about training smart and resting up. My planned mega training week last week didn't quite go to plan, but I have somehow managed to end up feeling tired anyway, so I will be looking to get plenty of sleep this week and head into the weekend feeling as fresh as possible. At the moment the arms etc are feeling heavy, but if I do this taper right then things should be looking good by Sunday. Fingers crossed.

Unfortunately my mega week of training last week ended up being a bit of an exercise in compromise as training often has to be. In my case the compromises were forced by some nasty weather with some wild winds and "Summer" storms coming in. The weather derailed training on Wednesday and pretty much wrote of training yesterday, however, I think I still managed to get some constructive training in. I would have liked more, but I will take what I was able to get.

Now that I am in taper week it is no use crying over spilt milk. The time for training has been and now the time is for resting and being smart. Most athletes find the idea of tapering difficult and I am no different. We are so conditioned to get out and train, that the idea of not training is a bit foreign, it can feel a bit like we are cheating. However, I always remind myself that tapering properly is just as important to racing as the training phase was. Heading out to do a hard session when I should be resting can derail race day just as much as skipping training would have done during the build. Tapering can mean ignoring those compulsions that are telling us that we should be out working hard and engaging the brain instead. That is why I keep saying this week is about training smart, doing what I know I need to do, rather than what I feel like like I should.

As I have written about before, tapering isn't about going off training cold turkey, but instead training properly. We know that by cutting out training completely you actually end up feeling worse, as well as losing fitness. Rather, the smart way to taper is to cut down the volume and have a bit less intensity, but not cutting out the work all together. The length of the taper depends a bit of how big a fatigue hole you are trying to climb out of. Given the interrupted training last week I am not all that fatigued (despite how I feel right now) so I don't need that big a taper. Training will more or less be as normal today and tomorrow (although no gym work), but after Wednesday I will be reducing the volume. I will be doing some intensity work on Wednesday and Thursday, but not long durations. By Saturday training will be short and light, a few race pace efforts, but mostly easy work with a bit of technique focus. Hopefully that means that by Sunday I am feeling fit, fresh and sharp. Just the way you want to be.

That's the plan anyway.