I’m a believer in the importance of rest and recovery and like TR’s structure of every 4th week being an easier week.
But I’d like to know if a taper week can count as that easier week? The volume is lower in a taper but there of course is still some intensity.
If it helps, here is my specific example:
My “increase FTP” plan was due to finish a week before my race.
Instead of having an easy week followed by a taper week, I changed the easy week to be a 4th week of hard workouts and then did the taper week and then the race.
Now, this week, with the race behind me, I’m wondering if I should make the whole week an easy recovery week or look to get back into solid training again?
Yes definitely - i would detrain if that was me. If your race was on a sunday just make that the start of your block, a rest week doesn’t have to be 7 days (despite the name)
Yes - it was an all out tri race (just over an hour) but I was pretty amazed to not even get a yellow day the next day. So maybe the taper week worked well to control fatigue build up
Thanks Eddie, and this is what’s at the back of my mind. I don’t want fatigue building up and then hitting me later. I have 5 weeks until my next B race so that would fit nicely with an easy week this week, 3 hard weeks and then a taper week before the race.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple as I have a week’s holiday in there too but let’s see.
As to your question, I think this was because I basically just wanted to raise my FTP and I felt that plan was more aggressive than the sprint triathlon plan. The context is that I got sick in August and was only fully better by early October. My running was way off but I felt I could get my riding back to a decent level. So I decided to approach the tri as a bit of a dress rehearsal where I’d go hard on the bike and just see how the run went.
You can feel free to check out my calendar and annotations. I had a full 3 weeks off in August where I couldn’t do anything, then started easing back in September. By October I was ready to go and had 2 months until the race. Looks like I was sailing pretty close to the wind though as about 3/4 of those October days were yellow!
Yeah if you significantly deloaded in your taper and then you smashed it for just an hour, I really don’t see the point in taking the next 8 days easy. It’s kind of like scheduling a rest week after the first day of a build block. A 6+ hour gravel race, on the other hand, would be a completely different story.
Sometimes I think the weekly calendar structure can get in the way of optimal training. I’d probably lay off the intensity for a week since you did enough of that in the specialty phase, but you’re basically fresh, so I wouldn’t worry about keeping volume too low.
