Roadman today. We're gonna have a little conversation about tapering…
Roadman today. We're gonna have a little conversation about tapering and what sort of sessions you should do the day before your race Let's cue the intro The big question is this how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health or happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman podcast Roadman, a conversation all you hear time and time again in the car park after races. It's from riders who sort of have this line and I'm not sure if this line, if they believe themselves or it's just something they peddle to save face because we all have that story that we tell people to save face. They're at their a priority event, say it's the nationals, and they're in the car park after and they're like, I felt amazing on the group ride last week. But I felt empty today. I felt dead. Legs just had nothing. I got my taper on. I tapered. You know, the peak was a week ago. I missed it. I'm absolutely empty today. What happens? Is there any truth behind that? Has that ever happened to you? We're in a unique enough situation with boy-cracing. And this is where I want to give you. I'm ultimately building up to giving you my pre-race session. I encourage you to find your own pre-race session. And And that's the focus today as podcast, but in order to do that, I need to just talk to you a little bit about taper and why we taper and why we can't taper for every single race, because as boy-crowders, we race pretty much week in, week out, sometimes multiple times per week. So the idea of a taper, when they looked at, you know, hundreds of different studies where we had reduced duration, reduced intensity, increased duration, reduced intensity, increased duration, increased intensity, like every single combination of all that. What the most effective is, it's reducing duration between 40 and 60% and it's maintaining intensity and the frequency of your workouts. So it's a tree part. So I'm going to say it again, because I'm Irish and I speak too fast. We just have so much to get out. When I was in America and I was in Canada, I was just a time so infuriated. I want to pull the words from people's throats. faster speak faster so at times I need to pinch myself and say slow down there's no rush to your podcast no one's gonna cut you off here bro I'll go on one of my tangents. An effective taper looks like reduced duration maintaining intensity and maintaining the frequency of your workout so it's tree parts the reduction In duration is a 40 to 60% reduction. I normally think about it just as half, a 50% reduction. Various studies have backed up this sort of tree part phase of duration, intensity, frequency and a 40 to 60% reduction. They looked at studies everything from a 10% reduction to a 90% reduction and the 40 to 60 was found as the ultimate sweet spot zone. So that's what a taper is and the length of the taper period, it really depends on a number of things. It depends on the event your target, you know, taper and for an ultra endurance Everest type event versus a four kilometer pursuit or two very different tapers. It depends on the athlete, how experienced you are. It depends on the length of the train and block. Have you been getting ready for six weeks or six months for this? So typically taper is very between 4 and 28 days.
Now I know that's a massively long period
Now I know that's a massively long period. But the commonality of this is even a 4 day period, if we look at a 7 day training week, we can't taper for 4 days if we have a race every week. So that means we're effectively training Monday, Tuesday, an Emmert taper and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday for the race on Sunday. If you fast forward that a month down the road, we're going to be completely detrained. We're going to lose our fitness. Our fitness is calculated over 42 days, so we need to maintain a high level of training for 42 days. So what's the result here? And sorry, just to jump around for a second, this is exasperated even further if you think about sometimes athletes want to peak for a number of events. Historically athletes have tried to peak for a 0 on the tour and the Vuelta that's been quite difficult and that's the reason why not many people Have won the 0 on the tour and the Vuelta in the same year It's difficult to get these peaks and depending on how many events you're trying to peak for that is One of the key determinants in if you are doing a four-day taper or 28 a taper But for me and you what's the what's the how we figure this out because we're racing every single week We can't taper every single week. So what I effectively do is I just control the two days before the event and I build up the rest of the week as normal like I'm focused on It's a part it's a normal part of my block and I'll pick I'm kind of going around in circles a little bit here Apologies for that. I'm just trying to think of the way to communicate this to you so it's easiest to understand. So I have my A-Priority race and that could be 12 weeks away. So that's what I'm focused on. So I will train through the 11 weeks on the way up to this. I can't taper for every single Sunday race because if I taper for every single Sunday race, I'm gonna get mini setbacks each week and ultimately my goal is 12 weeks away. So that needs to be my focus. But at the same time, I don't wanna go into a Sunday race be dropped straight away because I'm super fatigued, because I'm then I'm not getting the training effect of being in that race. So the Sunday races are a key building block for me getting to my ultimate target, which is 12 weeks away. So in order for me to get to that ultimate target that's 12 weeks away, I need to perform to a certain level in the Sunday races. So what I've done to sort of deal with those unique demands of this sort twin and conflict and goal of getting the sum that's 12 weeks away but also having a little bit of freshness for the race each week. I control my two days before the race so I typically take a day off the bike or an easy recovery day two days before my event so if I'm racing Sunday I take Friday off or easy and then Saturday I do a pre-race workout. Now my pre-race workout is maybe a a little harder than some you will think going, I can't do that pre-race. I'll be knackered the next day. But it has a number of goals and a typical pre-race workout has as its goals, you know, lactate clearance, getting prime in the legs for the effort it's going to come tomorrow. That's mainly your goal and maybe to see if your bike is working, you know, and you're not going to have any unknown mechanicals.
They're your typical goals of getting out and doing a pre-race spin
They're your typical goals of getting out and doing a pre-race spin. So if I was the day before my a prior he race which is say 12 weeks away the day before the race my goals are I want to turn on that lactate clearing system. I want to spin the legs out Make sure there's no fatigue. I want to make sure all systems are go for tomorrow But when I pedal back and now I'm 12 weeks from my event, but I have a race tomorrow I Want to make sure I have all I'm achieving all those things But I also want to make sure that I'm not losing fitness and that's why I throw in a session like this I typically do around 90 minutes and in those 90 minutes, I'll do three 10 minute periods of zone three efforts. Now if you don't know what zone three efforts are, go back to the podcast on set and zones. So zone three efforts, they're typically around a seven out of 10 efforts that are quite hard. So I'm going to do three 10 minute efforts with five minute breaks and then I'm going to do two one minute efforts full gas. So for me, this achieves a number of things as I'm saying, it gets me ready for the race tomorrow, but it also means I'm not losing the whole pile of fitness. So really what tapering is, it's a trade-off between how much fitness you're willing to lose and how much freshness you want for your race day. And that's the constant balance we have as athletes and the constant balance I have as a coach figuring out when to rest my athletes. And every athlete wants to be brilliant for every single race, but that's not possible. And that's why we need to pick that big target that's sort of 12 weeks away. We need to work backwards from that target, but carry out these pre-race day sessions. So we're freshen off to race each Sunday to get some sort of result because honestly if we're hoping to win in 12 weeks time, we need to be at least starting to get into the results. We need to be practising tactical scenarios and seeing how they're playing out. We can't be getting dropped after 2K each week and then hoping to win in 12 weeks time. taper, not a David Blaine magic trick. So I know at parts that was confusing and but it's something worth putting a little bit of thought into and it all starts with picking that a priority race and you can pick maybe two or three a priority races in a season and then the main thing is not getting too caught up on those in-term targets and racing through them. If you get dropped too bad, dust yourself down. If you have a good result, not gloat not too much, but you're training right through these events nearly. That can be difficult for a lot of people to do. Roadman, thanks for tuning in to this another Roadman Boyz podcast and I will be back to you tomorrow. I would encourage you to jump on over to roadmanresources.com and check that out and of course patreon.com and forward slash Anthony when there's going to watch. That's the way to support this podcast and make sure it comes in a week after week. Thanks for listening. Have a good night. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.