Common racing mistakes - tapering and recovery

You have trained for weeks, months, or years and it’s finally time to put all the effort to good use. It’s race day!

Everything is mapped out, you see yourself finally crossing the finish line, achieving a personal best, or even making it onto the podium.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as you expected.

Let’s have a look at some mistakes when it comes to tapering.

Tapering

Tapering is the process of gradually reducing the training volume in order to accelerate your recovery before a race. The key thing here is not ease off the throttle too much because you still want to keep the intensity of most of your workouts at your usual level. The goal is simply to reduce your training volume by a good amount. Depending on how long your tapering period is you can reduce the workload anywhere between 30 to 60 percent.

If you are a multisport athlete you can even compensate by maintaining your usual training volume in low impact activities like swimming and cycling.

Doing too much

Many think that having just a day or two of rest before a race will be enough to feel fresh during a race so they maintain their volume of training.

For fear of losing fitness, many also like to include a little extra during easier days following the “more is better” advice which can impact performance on race day.

The key here is to maintain intensity but lower the overall volume. That way your fitness will stay at about the same level and you will be ready to tackle the race with a smile on your face.

Doing too little

Tapering, also, isn’t the time to just stop training altogether. The fitness you gain can be lost quite quickly, even within a few days of inactivity your endurance and strength can start declining.

Just as with doing too much, maintain intensity but reduce the overall volume.

Poor nutrition

We covered this in a previous blog post, but it’s good to reiterate that having a nutrient rich and balanced diet leading up to your race and especially in your tapering period can help you recover better from all the training and prime your body for the physical challenges on race day.

Stick to thing you like and if you need more help, talk to a nutritionist.

Post race recovery

Once you cross the finish line it’s very important to drink something and have a nice protein and carb rich meal within 30 minutes of your race. This will help you a lot in your recovery process and will prevent excessive pain in your legs after a race.

Don’t forget to reward yourself with something you like to eat because you earned it. Sport should always be about having fun and enjoying life. If you restrict yourself too much from eating stuff you like, it will become just one more thing you have to do instead of a thing you like doing.

Take it easy, but not too easy, on the days leading up to your race and have something that will give you pleasure after the race - you earned it.