I despise tapering so much, it sometimes makes me NOT want to compete anymore. I feel moody, tired, and depressed and worried about my races because I'm so used to being very active on a daily basis. I remember reading that Laura Val doesn't worry about a taper but the article had no details. Is there anyone else who has been able to perform really well without cutting way back on yardage? I would be interested in hearing what you do.
4)If you do not know 100% that you will perform, then no matter what training/tapering you've done, you will not perform. It's that simple. Any negative self talk will decimate your efforts. You have to be so positively self-focused at meets, and not worry about anything else. I can recall at meets actually sitting behind the blocks and yawning before a race. I got life best times. I was so confident and mentally prepared that to actually swim the race was a mere formality. In the past I have visualized a goal time (100 Br) on the Colorado board and did that exact time TWICE in 2 months. The mind is powerful.
I have felt many different ways during different good races. Usually, I'm happy and lighthearted when I swim well, but I had a serious and distressing conflict with an individual before a nationals recently and got almost all best times. I think where I don't have confidence is about conditions. Cold is what gets me and I lose my confidence under those conditions because I have never gotten a best time cold.
I ordered Restwise and received it in the mail along with my pulse oximeter. I decided that I am not interested enough in competitive training anymore to actually follow the plan. You need to wear a HR monitor to bed so you can wake up and know your HR; you need to know your pulse and SpO2 right when you wake up; look at the color of your pee, yadda yadda. I decided that after being pregnant 4 times and having swum for 30 years I already know my body. I bet most lifelong swimmers can tell their pulse and HR just as well as they know their repeat times before even touching the wall. I am not criticizing RW at all. I just don't think it is the thing for me, esp now since I've stopped "swimming".
I don't think that program would work for me either. I'm rather a creative, intuitive type and that kind of regiment would kill the fun factor for me.
4) Some swimmers lie (related to above). I hear a lot at meets, usually in the female locker room, "Oh, I haven't been training much." These people will then proceed to do well and/or break records. Yea, right, not training much. I think that often-times these people are just playing mind games.
I agree. I think these people also tend to sandbag their seed times. And I'm not talking about tactical sandbagging because they are swimming the next event or something--I'm talking about people who just always enter with times they must know they are going to destroy.
