Looking back on some season stats: Part 1

While this season was a bit of a bust for me, I still learned a few things that will (hopefully) help me out next season. One of those things was what sort of tapering works best for me. Unfortunately there's no "one-size-fits-all" approach to tapering for a race. Some people seem to need a longer taper, other respond best to a short taper. Some race best on only a slight reduction in training load, while others need more. There's some basic principles behind the concept, but it does seem as though each person has to do a little trial and error and see what's most effective for them.

This year I used Golden Cheetah to track my bike fitness. I could have used it for my run training too, but I didn't. Here's what my Performance Management Chart looked like for the season:

I've highlighted each of the 3 races I did and where my Training Stress Balance was. You can see that Smiths Falls was a lower priority race for me, so I didn't taper all that much. My form was definitely on the upswing, but I still had a negative TSB. Since Nationals was my "A" race, I did a full-on taper, and was well into positive TSB territory. For Brockville I had an even higher TSB - this wasn't by design, but I had a family trip down to the Philadelphia that week that really impacted my ability to train.

So what does this chart tell me? It's hard to really compare bike performances in each race, since I had difference power targets that I wanted to hit in each. I think the best indicator is actually how well I ran - the more bike-fit I was, the more I should have had left in the tank for the run. And my bike taper is pretty similar to my run taper. So where was my best run performance? Nationals, by far. Not only did I average my best pace of the season there, but I did it on what was definitely the hardest run course. So if this is a reflection of my taper, then the answer to the question "what type of taper works best for me?" is the classic Goldilocks answer of "not too little, not too much". My TSB wasn't high enough for Smiths Falls (not that it was supposed to be at that point in the season) but was way too high for Brockville.

So next season I'll make sure that I plan my "A" race around a TSB that is positive, but only a little, probably somewhere between 3 and 6. What and when that "A" race will be I haven't decided. I'm still pondering next season, and am weighing a few different options. Stick with the short-course stuff? Try something longer? Make another run at Nationals? Try some different races further away?