Taper Time!

Tapering is always an enjoyable experience.  Today I was contemplating why it's always so refreshing to taper.  There are a few rewarding things about it:

1. Less practices which allow your body to begin to recover from the weeks/months of hard workouts
2. Practices are shorter, also helping out the recovery process
3. More focus on details and speed/power

Taper sort of feels like an entirely acceptable series of slacker workouts.  You come in to practice late, flop around in the pool for a bit, coaches expect very little and you get to leave practice early.  All the while you're visualizing your races as the excitement builds for the big meet ahead!

I had my last hard workout today.  I race in the Olympic Pool in 8 days.  I've chosen a 1 to 1.5 week taper, I took it easy on Thursday during our normal recovery workout.  I had planned on not lifting as scheduled but ended up doing a bit of manual labor which I would certainly call a "weight" workout.  Saturday morning was race-pace as usual.  I chose to only swim 2 of the 3 rounds and do 1/2 of each round of swimming.  It gave me a chance to race without really breaking myself down.  I ended up doing two rounds:

2 x

25y Dive on :30
25y Push on :30
50y Dive on 1:00

A simple "broken 100" set.  The other guys did a longer version of that set with bands.  I was very run down after the weights on Friday but ended up with about a 47.5 second 100 backstroke.  Good, but not great.  With the double dives per 100 and the rest, I feel like I should be in the 45's or 46's.  It was an acceptable workout considering how I was feeling.  I may swim on Sunday and will definitely swim Monday before I leave for Europe.