Tapering Training

Tapering Training

Paul Arden | Tuesday, 8 October 2024

Apart from recovering from jet lag, which seems to affect me more and more these days, I’ve been busy tapering my training. The secret to good tapering is to gradually decrease the training workload but not so much that you feel stale, but instead are left primed and ready to go. But it never seems to work out that way!

Tomorrow Ashly and I drive to Langkawi for a holiday and the Malaysian Ironman. Ashly gets the holiday and I get the Ironman. Next year Ashly plans to do the 70.3 (the Half Ironman) – so that’s the end of her Langkawi holidays! I’m looking forward to managing Ashly’s pre-race stress!!!

Actually we always stick a holiday around it. It’s about 850USD to enter and then there is accommodation, ferry, meals… and so we add some days before and after to chill and enjoy the place. And Langkawi is a very nice tropical island indeed. We filled an episode there for Ladyfish. Someday I might actually own a beach bungalow there. Or something like that.

I was thinking about the taper and how it applies to flycasting sport. Often we see competitors casting all the time at the World Championships – up early at dawn, casting every chance they get. And yes it’s important to get into the groove, but they are not really going to improve in these days, at least not if they have trained properly leading up to the event. And so largely it can be counterproductive.

Bernt tapers; I know this because we have talked about it. And I think it’s a very good idea and one that I try to instil with the athletes I coach. In flycasting it’s not so much about reducing effort, although of course we want to feel strong and we certainly want to avoid injury. Even so, I think it’s much more about being prepared mentally. Shifting our focus, from improving flycasting to performance on the day.

Most people don’t train properly by the way. They don’t practise from starting “cold”, or casting with the clock. They don’t have a competition plan that they have trained numerous times. They don’t have a plan for when things go sideways. Just practising casting is not practising for competition.

Rickard took a kettlebell with him to warm up the muscles before competing. This was a really great idea. I’m a big fan of kettlebells. Stretching, running around a bit, listening to Motörhead (or Elvis for some, apparently) can be used to put you in the Zone. But you have to have trained this way too.

Any sporting event, whether it’s the flycasting WCs or Ironman, is trained for by working backwards from the event date and planning your training route to competition.

It rarely works out perfectly however. I didn’t plan to be in the UK for the last month and I didn’t plan to get ill on the last week of my trip either! Fortunately there is a huge volume of very specific training under my belt since the last Ironman. I’ve done a long weekly bike ride virtually every weekend. That’s what I’m missing at the moment in my life; my 5hr weekly indoor bike ride. Every week on top, a long 2.5hr run at IM pace. Swimming is never enough. And I really need to fix that, but I swam well in the UK and so I’m happy about that. And then all the other stuff; VO2 Max sessions, shorter runs, climbing the stairs with boat provisions and petrol, kayaking down the lake, weight sessions, catching big fish... A whole plethora of different trainings to mix things up and keep life interesting. If someone has to run back because something was left behind, it’s going to be me. If anyone is going to carry more stuff up the stairs, it’s going to be me.

So yep I’m very much looking forward to Saturday. I’m always a bit excited before these things, but I do have a plan. I know what I’m going to eat and drink and when – and I’ve trained that. I know the effort I want to put out on the swim. I know my power output on the bike and I know the pace I want to run the first 1/2 marathon… and then i want to negative split.

That’s the sort of focus we need to put into flycasting sport.

As I wrote in one of my triathlon groups recently: if I have a good Ironman I’ll buy myself a new triathlon bike. And If I don’t then I’ll move to 70.3 and my myself a new triathlon bike! So it’s win-win. And you should think about that the next time you go fishing and decide to buy a Sexyloops rod!

 

 

I had some good lessons this week. In one of them with Karel an elephant appeared on the far bank. After the lesson I was talking to Chris Avery and behind me an eagle swooped down and caught a juvenile snakehead.  I sent a photo to Chris. He would have taken a better photograph of course because he’s done that for a living. And then the elephant swam clean across the lake, past the boat and carried on his merry way. I like living here. You can see that video on Sexyloops Instagram by the way @mrsexyloops

I’ve very much enjoyed Chris’ FPs and am sorry to see him go. I feel like I know Willowbrook as my home fishery now. I’ve learned more about river keeping and restoration from Chris’ writing than I ever did before. And I’ve even been through many of his club’s meetings!! I’ve learned how to better manage committee chairmen. I hope never to be on another committee for as long as I live, but should it happen there is a smarter way than the chaos I’ve usually managed to achieve :))) So MANY THANKS Chris for such insightful FPs, that will no doubt stand the test of time and always be interesting to read and revisit for our readers!

Ok now I have to wax my chain.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

Cheers,  Paul