Here’s the good news. Your training is basically over. Pretty much the only thing “Training” can do in the next week and a half is ruin the ride for you.
By that I mean to say, if you engage in strenuous of high volume physical effort, you will become fatigued. You will not recover from that fatigue before the ride. Your goals now are to stay loose, move enough to prevent becoming stiff, and to rest. Understand, whether you like it or not, it takes at least two weeks for your body to incorporate and adapt to training loads. And then, the adaptation will occur, only if you are getting a proper amount of rest and recovery.
By way of illustration, let me tell a little story. I work in a bike shop. As you might imagine, I do “see it all.” Let’s call this individual Billy-B. Billy-B has worked with great discipline, performing a year long plan. He has been preparing for a big event. He has cheerfully accepted terrific training loads, hard workouts, long workouts, sometimes painful or incredibly boring activities. No problem. Then comes the last month. The idea of tapering, and recovering, and resting just seems to elude him.
He says to me, “I couldn’t stop working. I just had to go out and do something. I need to train for the event in two weeks.”
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, I’d easily be able to take a vacation in southern France. The real tragedy is that, shortly after hearing that last from Billy-B, who simply would not rest up for an event, I then hear the following. “I don’t know what happened. I thought I was ready, but I just ran out of gas about half way through. I guess I’ll have to train harder next time.”
Not harder, my friend. Smarter! And “smarter” includes getting plenty of rest on the final run up to your event.
No comments:
Post a Comment