Extreme Tapering = Better Run?
I will never claim to be a physiologist or even an expert in technique, but I am very analytic and have enough data points to postulate a theory that extreme tapering prior to race day may enhance run performance. I specify run performance as this is the discipline that creates the most wear and tear on our bodies and hence has the most potential benefit to nailing the balance of recovery time with no fitness loss.
My data points:
Indianapolis Monumental Marathon - November 2010. This was my second standalone marathon. My previous was the Cincinnati Flying Pig in '09 where I clocked a 3:45. I trained hoping for a 3:20 as I knew my improved fitness and better execution could yield a solid improvement. The Sunday prior to the race I had a sharp pain in my knee about 2 miles from the end of my 7 mile taper run. It was so bad that I had to walk home. I didn't run once in the next 6 days leading to the race. Just a steady dose of ice and ART. Race morning came and I felt pretty good, ended up with a 35 minute PR and BQ time and importantly no abnormal pain during or after the race
Ironman Wisconsin - September 2013. This was my second IM. IMAZ 2011 was my first and was a very good race...well executed and clocked a 10:06 with a 3:47 run split. I had the normal taper challenges of wanting to do more than the prescribed workouts given my body and mind were used to longer distances. That said, I did follow the plan. For IMWI, I didn't have any forced down time from injury, but I did still skip all of my running that week. My time for IMWI was 10:10, but with a much harder bike course. My run split was 3:27. or 20 minutes faster than IMAZ.
Independence 5K - July 2014. I am taking a year off of tri and dedicated training this year due to both work and personal demands. I have been running 2-3 days a week with no prescribed distances, paces, etc. Just running for fun with some intervals/fartleks built in to keep it interesting. I was in Switzerland for 10 days and flew to Florida to intersect a family vacation over the July 4th Holiday. Given the travel and jetlag I did not run the seven days prior to a July 4th 5k race I signed up for on a whim. My previous 5K PR was 19:01 but that was at a different fitness level. I was hoping to hit 19:15 (6:12/mile pace) which my Garmin said I nailed on the spot, but my clock time was 18:37. I went online and confirmed the route was a full 5K, and after downloading my data realized the oak canopy beneath which I was running thew off my GPS signal so I was running much faster than I thought. Net, a pretty significant PR of 18:35 chip time (27 second PR).
I know my fitness has increased over the past few years, but where I am now is nowhere near my peaks in 2010-12. I am beginning to wonder if 'extreme tapering' (not running at all for a week prior to a race) has real performance benefits.
Any thoughts or additional data points?
Comments
Good question, and something I'm interested in, in general: rest vs fatigue. Spinning off a few thoughts/ideas off the top of my head:
1. The effectiveness of the length of taper (or total break) is probably related to the level of fatigue and training stress. So the higher the stress you've built up, the more essential/effective a strong and longer taper might be.
2. Based on experience a full week off is about a long as I can go before starting to backslide in fitness. Thats probably the limit on extreme tapering. Although only two weeks out of doing nothing you may only experience a slight drop in performance, and may not be enough to notice vs what would have been possible. Mentally too, it may be easier to execute properly when well rested, so regardless of your actual objective fitness, you may just race better than you would have even at a higher fitness and less rest.
3. The more years of consistent training you have, the more robust you are at churning out high level performances on less-training.
4. I just read an article about top-level/pro runners/triathletes who have been forced to stand down during the season for injury or other reason and come back against the seeming odds to crush their season A race performance. Thats overwhelmingly attributed to forced rest both mental and physical.
These things tend to make me believe that sports science doesn't really understand well the trade-offs between stress and rest, and that we in endurance sports probably still (even in EN where we focus on ROI) overvalue training stress vs recovery, taper and rest.
I am curious to know where the fine line is between being rested/recovered and losing fitness. I think that's also an individual thing, though. For me, just having a few days of not doing the daily chaotic drill of train-get ready for work-get kids ready-work-do it all in reverse-collapse into bed....makes a world of difference.
Two seasons ago I was deep in a fatigue hole and was amazed at how hard it was to dig myself out of that hole, even with heaps of one on one help with Coach P. This was just before my IM build started for my A Race. I never got the fitness that I was expecting because of the depth of fatigue meant that I couldn't absorb much work at all. As a consequence of my personal experience with mismanaging my own fatigue I guess I am like those Generals that used to be criticized for trying to fight the current war, using what they learned in the last war!
Anyway, I am a lot more aware of the issue now and I have come to think the fatigue issue is bigger than just showing up on race day still deep in fatigue. IMO, many peeps pay insufficient attention to allowing themselves sufficient rest to absorb all the work they do in general training, as well as during a race build. I recognise that we load up our plan and that the easiest thing to do is do the wkos as written and push through the fatigue with the thought that 'work is hard so you expect to be tired'. That, coupled with the all the posts on the Dashboard and Forums telling us all that '#work works#' tends to overemphasise the 'work' aspect of training. We all know in out heads that it is the rest after the work that allows us to absorb the work and improve our fitness, and that we should not follow the plan into a brick wall. But many continue to do so! I also think that most of us that are long course athletes are Type A personalities which definitely doesn't help!
Of course one of the reasons insufficient rest/overtraining is so common, IMO, is that there is little in the way of objectively measuring fatigue. I know Coach P's wu on the bike attempts to do that, but who really uses that protocol to decide whether to do the wko as written? Also I know some peeps use their waking heart rate to judge their level of fatigue, but again, IMO, this also tends to be pretty subjective.
http://members.endurancenation.us/Resources/Wiki/tabid/91/Default.aspx?topic=Tapering+with+Intent
This Wiki entry on tapering reminds us that tapering has two goals.
The most important one is to recover from all that work. And by 'recover' it means fully absorb all that work so you can express that fitness on race day.
The second goal is to sharpen yourself physically and mentally for the race — sometimes peeps overdo the sharpening, lowering potential race day performance.
On the other hand, last month for the Grand Rapids half iron I was back to my old "crash taper" method...this time enforced by a week-long business trip Sunday until Friday night of race week. That meant zero biking for 8 days before the race, and only 2 runs (Tuesday 45 mins and Friday 30 mins). And 2 swims in a resort pool. And the result...an 8-minute PR including a ~6 minute run PR.
Honestly I'm not sure what to make of it.
Trying to determine the impact of a taper on race results, especially long distance stuff like a 26.2 or 140.6 is, IMO, a fruitless exercise. There are so many other independent variable to consider: terrain, temp, humidity, nutrition, pacing, mental fortitude in the last 1/3rd of a race, and in am IM, the impact of the bike before. I have not seen any pattern myself in what I do during my taper and what the end result of my run time is.
I do think, from a physiological perspective, that it's critical to get in at least ONE 30-45 minute WKO in each discipline which includes at least 6 30-45 second HARD/FFAST intervals. to keep the power generators charged up. Meaning, mitochondrial proteins have a half life short enough that neglecting to stress them can cause a loss of strength and endurance within a week.
At the end of the day, our sport is primarily about being over-trained most of the time. Even on a reasonable program like EN, you still have work, family, etc. It all adds up.
For me it's a combination of:
+ am I fit? Have I done the training?
+ am I rested? Relative to my normal state of training/life/etc.
+ am I ready to execute (one thing none of you have considered is how much better you get race to race with managing effort, fuel, conditions, etc)
If I can answer those three then there's a PR opportunity on the table.