Will my taper work??

2) I disagree with Ande on gauging your taper by how fast you swim during it. Typically if you are truly resting you will go through a cycle 3-7 days out where you most likely will feel like crap...this is where things turn mental and the whole aspect of "trust" comes into play....I see far more swimmers blow it a week out because they can't get over thinking they are getting out of shape when they feel this way...when the opposite is true. My best meets are the ones I've felt poor till I stepped up on the block for my first event. Feeling like crap can be quantified a bit. When the body rests after hard training it accumulates glycogen. Although there seems to be uncertainty about the amount, glycogen will draw water molecules with it into the muscle fibers. The rule I use is 1 mole of glycogen takes on about 1 mole of water. This causes the uncomfortable bloated and swollen feeling as the water builds up in the tissues. Result: you feel fat and out of shape as a result. This is a particularly nasty part of the taper and is ALL mental. I'm with Paul. My 100% efforts during taper have always been miserable and slow and NOT correlated at all with performance at the meet. When I step on the block, I spit in the other guys lane, snarl, wave to the fans, say hi to mom and just get the hell out of there. It usually works for me. I TRUST MY TAPER.... I still do the hard swims and look at the clock in the last week but I don't get surprised if they are bad. I'd probably be puzzled to see a good one.

2) I disagree with Ande on gauging your taper by how fast you swim during it. Typically if you are truly resting you will go through a cycle 3-7 days out where you most likely will feel like crap...this is where things turn mental and the whole aspect of "trust" comes into play....I see far more swimmers blow it a week out because they can't get over thinking they are getting out of shape when they feel this way...when the opposite is true. My best meets are the ones I've felt poor till I stepped up on the block for my first event. Feeling like crap can be quantified a bit. When the body rests after hard training it accumulates glycogen. Although there seems to be uncertainty about the amount, glycogen will draw water molecules with it into the muscle fibers. The rule I use is 1 mole of glycogen takes on about 1 mole of water. This causes the uncomfortable bloated and swollen feeling as the water builds up in the tissues. Result: you feel fat and out of shape as a result. This is a particularly nasty part of the taper and is ALL mental. I'm with Paul. My 100% efforts during taper have always been miserable and slow and NOT correlated at all with performance at the meet. When I step on the block, I spit in the other guys lane, snarl, wave to the fans, say hi to mom and just get the hell out of there. It usually works for me. I TRUST MY TAPER.... I still do the hard swims and look at the clock in the last week but I don't get surprised if they are bad. I'd probably be puzzled to see a good one.