You Live, You Learn

Today, I decided that I do not enjoy tapering weeks. The fourth and final week in our training cycle, it is the week where we do light workouts and prep for an extremely rigorous task, usually a 2k. Practice on Monday and Tuesday was short and generally light. Today, we had off. And tomorrow, I will be expected to erg a 2k. Personally, I think this is absolutely preposterous.

As I noticed with the last tapering week that was scheduled, I have not been doing as much. Granted, this is the point of the tapering, but this is not something that is beneficial to me. I am spending less time at the gym, lowering my standards on my performance and still consuming as much food as I do when we work hard. Now, I am not as concerned about the food I am consuming, because overall, it is perfectly acceptable. But not going all-out for the workouts is what is really concerning me.

I went through the training cycle once; this was just preliminary. Now that I have been through the cycle again, I can pick out tendencies that I have according to the week and its corresponding workouts.

Week one, I get back into the groove of doing work. Week two, I progress. And week three—the week of my least favorite test, the 3 x 5k—is when I actually peak. I know that I am looking toward that particular task at the end of the week and so I work as hard as I possibly can all week. In fact, I decreased my split by about 5 seconds from the first 3 x 5k test to this past Saturday’s test, without anyone siting on my tail to remind me of my goal split.

But these tapering weeks are absolutely killing me. The light workouts and copious amounts of time to rest are just slowing me down. I went to the gym today (even though today was the resting day, seeing as our 2k is tomorrow) and attempted to row a serious 2k, as fast as I possibly could. I didn’t finish. I probably could have. But I just let myself stop at about 1,300 meters. If that were in practice, I would never hear the end of it from my coach.

Tapering weeks are not only stifling my physical performance, but they are completely destroying my motivation. I felt so awful today when I let myself stop in the middle of a piece. I did so well this past Saturday and I just let it all go today. A split-second decision to not push through, when I know very well that I could have, ruined all of the confidence I gained over the past week and a half. Now I feel so discouraged for my 2k tomorrow, which is arguably the most important test we have.

And so the moral of the story: I should not be upset (although you better believe I am). Rather, I should take this experience and build upon it. Next tapering week, there is not a chance that I will be taking anything easy. I preform best when I keep on going, trucking ahead at full speed. It has taken me some time, but I have learned. This is just one more step towards me becoming the most successful athlete I can be.