The art of the taper

2 points I wanna make with this post...my prep related to last year and my planned taper for nats.

The prep: Last year at this time I was at a CTL of 67 and tapered down to the low 60's for the race. This year I'm at 90 and will taper down to 81. A big, big difference. Here's a comparison of the last 28 days of 08 and 09...notice all the yellow in 08 (or +TSB). I think I was burnt out before nats last year and had a mental let down at the beginning of June when I needed to be killing it. This year after my forced break due to a crash and broken rib in April I was ready to really hit it going into May and June. It's all there in the #'s (also look at the ATL days above 90tss/d this year).


The taper: I've given this a lot of thought and research and decided on a one week taper with less than 10 tss/d loss of CTL. I'm not planning on hanging up the bike this year (like I did last year...for 3 months!). So I don't want to lose too much fitness but I want to go into the races in Louisville as fresh as possible. A taper doesn't mean just sitting on the couch either, I'm planning on doing the tnwc (sitting in till the last part) then another day of SST/Vo2 intervals (dialing back the time/number and staying at the low end of the wattage target). I'll also throw in some longer easier rides. My plan is HERE. And this is a predictive chart that spells out the numbers:


Lastly I'm working on my victory salute...do I rock the baby with a ring kiss? double arms pointing to the sky? blow kisses to the crowd? It's so hard to choose the perfect one...(do I really need to put a smiley here?)