Tapering Strategy

As someone with historically poor recovery and rapid degeneration of fitness, I have had to be quite careful with how I taper for the big event.

My strategy is based around keeping my legs fresh but optimizing my fitness. Here is what I have done and will be doing:

• Saturday, 7/3: Massive and final productive training ride. 75 miles to and up Greylock with a 110% effort on the mountain. Pretty major success here.
• Sunday, 7/4: 10 miles of ultra easy recovery
• Monday, 7/5: 15 miles very easy with one moderate effort 1000 ft climb
• Tuesday, 7/6: 9 miles with two high intensity short efforts.
• Wednesday, 7/7: 20 miles with two very high cadence intervals
• Thursday, 7/8: (PROJECTED) 10 miles very light spining
• Friday, 7/9: (PROJECTED) Warm-up routine on the trainer in the room before dinner, 45 mins.
• Saturday, 7/10: (PROJECTED) All out on Washington. I predict that I will need to very nearly kill myself to be under 1:30. If it's raining I don't think I have the fitness to break this number; truly, I don't. Given absolutely flawless scenarios and a brilliantly paced perforance, I could possibly hit 1:25, but absolutely no lower than this under any circumstance unless I throw Tom Danielson a line!

I have some additional thoughts regarding my preparation for this race. Training-wise I think I have worked adequately hard. I have hit my mileage mark and have quite a bit of high intensity work under my belt. As far as my weight is concerned, I am disappointed that I did not sacrifice more. I have been an avid and consistent weight lifter for six years. In that time, I have gained a lot of hard earned muscle on a very small frame. Getting rid of said muscle for this race was very difficult for me to do. The only saving grace is that I'm about 5% bodyfat at the moment, perhaps less. Still though, I am carrying at least ten extra pounds of muscle that needn't be there to stress my aerobic system.

Hopefully next year I will make the full sacrifice.