by Lance Watson

A taper is the culmination of hard training and proper season planning in an attempt to reach your racing goals. As you rest and unload the muscles, you get to enjoy your fitness - all of a sudden you have incredible workouts, tons of energy and a positive mindset. However, a taper can go awry if not given the attention that it deserves.

Tapering is the term used to describe the process of bringing the body to a state where peak physical performance can occur. At its most basic level, tapering is the cutting back of volume, frequency and/or duration while maintaining a speed component in workouts. This allows the body to fully recover and rebuild itself leading into the most important races of the season. The peaking process includes workouts that tie together the development of your aerobic energy system with the exact demands of racing.

Plan for perfection The key to a successful season begins in the off-season when you draw up your training plan and race schedule for the year. Use your race schedule to rate all your races in order of importance so that you will be able to focus on one or two that are most important. Throughout the winter you will probably be working on base training while the spring brings with it more aerobic-threshold work. As the summer approaches, speed work will become more important. Throughout these cycles, ensure that your body is getting enough recovery so that it can reap the positive adaptations that regular training will bring.

You need to set your own goals and maintain your focus on these goals. This means that if your most important race is in July, then your placing in races held in May is of little consequence. Don't fully taper for your B- or C-priority races. Cut back on training for these early races, but don't fully unload. These races are of value as they will help prepare you mentally, physically and technically for your important race, but use them as training rather than racing days.

If there is an early B race, then you can use what we call a mini-taper - taper a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks. If you are racing on Saturday, you can back off your volume on Wednesday and taper into the weekend and then resume regular training on the Monday after the race. This will allow you to recover a little more for the race but won't bring your body into perfect recovery.

A-priority races When your most important race is approaching it is time to focus on getting rested. The absolute key to a good taper is perfect recovery. This means that your nutrition should be as good or better than it has been all year and you are resting as much as possible. Use this as an excuse to sit on the couch and watch your favorite movies or triathlon videos ad nauseam. You should have a water bottle with you all the time during your taper to keep hydrated well in advance of the race, and you should be following pre- and post-workout nutritional guidelines. Also remember to stretch well after each workout, and try to get a massage four to five days out from the race to keep those muscles loose.

A general guideline is that you should be decreasing your volume gradually two to three weeks before your race while maintaining intensity. You should take the day after a high-intensity workout completely off or just have a short recovery workout. Your last few days before the race you need to make sure that you are not producing muscle tissue damage from hard anaerobic activities.

Your last workout with any sort of extended intensity should be at least three days out from race day so that your body has ample time to recover. Those workouts should consist of short efforts to race pace (no faster) with lots of recovery.

The day before Everyone has his or her own pre-race routine, and you need to find what works for you. Many athletes do short, easy, sessions in all three sports on the racecourse. Each workout would last no more than 20 minutes and produce little lactic acid. A less-trained athlete should do less. Many fine athletes ruin their confidence in the final stages of the taper simply because they can't relax and maintain confidence in their ability to perform. Just remember, the physical work is done and it's time to reap the rewards of your hard work.