Looking for some advice. I’m two weeks away from my A event. The last two workouts I have struggled with mightily. One was a VO2 max ride where I could only complete 5 out of 8 intervals and the other was a threshold ride where I had to lower the intensity to 95% for 2 of the 4 intervals and include some back pedalling. My legs just feel like they are missing the “pop” they usually have.
So, my question is this: do I risk taking the next week off completely to rest? I would start again 5 days out from my event and finish off the taper. Or could this leave me in a worse place than following the full taper? Any advice or anecdotal experiences would be much appreciated.
Don’t take a week off. Blood volume loss would be substantial and would not return if training resumed 5 days from event.
You’d be better off switching to zone 1 & 2 only, and just replacing all workouts with that, than taking it completely off.
There may be better nuanced options yet, but I just wanted to prevent catastrophe and offer a solution that would have virtually no tradeoffs by comparison to the proposed solution of a week completely off.
You are still on a good trajectory you just need to tweek your taper & make it a little more aggressive a little sooner.
If it were me, I’d go a little different way that Alex suggested. Definitely don’t cut frequency. Cut intensity dramatically but not totally. By dramatically…I mean if you have 6 >threshold intervals just do 2. I’d consider cutting out theshold work & only doing relatively short sweetspot intervals instead…same thing as >threshold intervals…if you have 30 minutes of threshold just do 3x3 sweetspot instead.
But, most importantly, BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE ON TRACK. You are! Not every taper goes the same way every time. Keep an eye on your diet…get enough protein for sure. Get more sleep. You are going to crush your A event. Every time you are getting on the bike you should be telling yourself that, ‘You are going to crush this event. You are going to crush this event.’
