The origins of the 4 week taper.

Swim start in Nice

When I started triathlon there wasnt a wealth of information around about the sport, especially living in South Africa where we were cut off from the rest of the world. But one day I got to watch this race on TV, called the Nice international triathlon, race commentator Phil Ligget. I watched in amazement as this guy Mark Allen, won the race for the 8th time. He raced it 8 times and won it 8 times (eventually 10 out 10). So I decided to find out how he trains and what he does and the most noteable training tip I ever found was how he tapered for a long distance race. That day I understood why the rest you plan is more important than the training.

Meeting the big man in Monaco. That's me on the left

Mark Allen is the only person I know of today who uses this formula, I have tested it myself and know it to work not only for sport but in life too.

Basically it takes your body two weeks to recover from a period of sustained stress(exercise or work) and then another 2 weeks for you to build up the stength again.

So you know how you have travelled to a big race and you get there a couple of days before the race and feel so lethargic, tired, no speed, hardly make it up the stairs. Well this is your body going into recovery mode. R&R. Rest and recovery.

So in order to capitalize on this, Mark Allen started tapering 4 weeks before a huge race by cutting his mileage in half every week and increasing the quality and of course resting and eating well.

Obviously there are other factors like food, sleep and being a full time triathlete that can affect your personal approach to this, so go try it and tweak it, thats how Mark got it right. also remember if you are an amateur and are working a 9-5, you should really consider long taper periods since you got work stress to deal with as well.

If you want to find out more about Mark Allen and his approach I would check out two books.

Prof. Tim Noakes - The Lore of Running

Tony Svensson - Total Triathlon almanac

Cheers for now 

CoachBez