Here we go

We are getting close to the most exciting time of year. April 30th is the last guarenteed meet for anyone. At this point it is too late to do anything. Those of you that came out in January, worked hard throughout the year, came to pracrice during spring break, winter break you get to reep the benefits of of that hard work. We are moving into the taper of our track season. Been asked alot about what is a taper. Here is my best description.

Performance = Fitness - Fatigue

Your performance depends on two things, how fit you are and how tired you are. If my fitness level allows me to run a 60 second 400. Well right after running a 400 I am still in good enough shape to run a 60 but I am too tired. On the other hand if I am only in good enough shape to run a 65 second 400. It doesn't matter how rested you are you won't go faster.

During the year we are just trying to improve our fitness level, however, to get into good shape we have to work hard, which also increases our fatigue level. As we get in better shape we need to work harder to keep improving. So our performance dosen't make big improvements, it goes up a little throughout the year because of improvements in technique, experience etc...

At the end of the year we go into a taper. Basically if we stop working out our fatigue will go down but so will our fitness level, which means our performance won't improve. However if we reduce the volume of work we do and just keep the intensity high we won't get in better shape but our fitness won't decrease as much and our fatigue will decrease, which means performance increases.

In sports like football, basketball, baseball etc.. how you do in the regular season dictates your postseason. However, in track we can go 0-7 in dual meets and we still get just as much entries into the final meet. So we train right through those meets, work hard, sacrifice our record in dual meets because it is irrelevant.

So those of you that worked hard, getting some rest will reveal how high of a fitness level you attained, those of you who didn't getting some rest won't change much. Thats why there is nothing you can really do now. Here is my little drawing, if you are a visual learner. You can see as fitness goes up so does fatigue so the red line (performance) doesn't change much. Then once we start the taper (vertical line) fitness actually goes down, we get in worse shape but performance goes up because we drop fatigue faster.

Well we are at the vertical line, time to see who worked hard and who didn't.