Excited to participate in my second ever road race. It’s a 36 mile rolling road race, relatively flat course. Barely 1000 feet of total elevation gain. I’ve put in an enormous amount of work for this. Worked through base, build, and specificity. It’s one week till the race and I am now entering a taper. This weeks critical. Too much and I’m overcooked. Too little and I am under cooked. Would love the communities thoughts on how to approach this week. A total collapse of volume supplemented with just a few short punchy rides? Short workouts with 30 second intervals repeated a handful of times? Easy Zone 2 efforts? Complete days off the bike? 7 days out as of this writing!
You are putting way too much on the value of this week….your fitness won’t be affected that much by a taper.
Reduce volume, keep your intensity and you’ll be fine. So if yo normally do 5 VO2 max intervals in a ride, reduce it down to 3, etc.
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Couldn’t agree more with this. Not only from a fitness standpoint but a mental stress standpoint
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to add to the above, you might not even need to fully taper for a 36 mile race given it’s probably under 2 hours…and if it’s a flat course like you mention it’ll come down to a bunch sprint.