This week marks the first week of my peak (or taper) phase. I've never tried to peak for a race, so I'm going "by the book" and taking two weeks to peak. I've been feeling a little anxious about how this is really going to work, especially since my attempt to rest a little for the Marathon race and my subsequent illness really screwed up my last Build phase. I had also been feeling very strong on the bike before I got sick. I'm definitely not back to that point yet.
Deviating from the plan and doing lots of hard workouts now won't really help me when I need it (for July 30). So, I'll stick with it and see how things work out. There's enough riding in the taper phase that I should be fine.
It will be strange to have a little time on my hands for the next few weeks. Time on the bike will drop while I'm tapering (and then really drop in the race phase), and I'm only going to do strength workouts once a week while tapering (and drop them completely for the race phase).
My "A" race is the Stony Creek Time Trial on July 30. This was the first mountain bike race I did, and I know the trails well, so it's important for me to do well there. I'm still looking around for races to do for the rest of this race phase. I'm looking at a (road) criterium on August 5. That one unnerves me a little, as I've heard stories about how low-level crits are pretty crazy. The following weekend (Aug 12-13), I'm looking at either a long mountain bike race (Ore to Shore) or a road time trial.
After that, I'm back to rebuilding my fitness to get ready for some early Fall mountain bike racing and cyclocross.
1 comment:
I may have to try that Cold FX. I felt this cold coming long before I got really sick, there just wasn't anything I could do about it.
As far as the taper goes, I am going to do a few things differently next time. First, I did too many LSD-type rides, although part of this was because I got sick. Looking back at it, I should have done more intense rides as soon as I got feeling better. I felt like I lost a lot of anaerobic fitness and was still rebuilding it last week.
Second, I should have done most of my taper rides on the trail. Between getting sick and just riding on the road too much, I felt a little rusty technically when I did hit the trail on the second week of my taper.
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