Rest Up For Optimal One-Day Performances


With the end of the Tour de France only two weeks before the road race at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, many people asked me about the difficulties some cyclists faced in going from one event to the other. Is two weeks enough time for Tour de France cyclists to recover and rebound in order to perform at their best in a hard one-day event like the Olympic road race? The question boiled down to the issue of tapering.

On the positive side, the Tour de France was a three-week, 3650 km training block that could not be replicated by any rider who wasn’t in the race. On the negative side, if an athlete was exhausted from the Tour, two weeks is not a lot of time to recover and return to top form. For optimal performance in one-day events – and this goes for Olympians or amateur athletes anywhere – being fresh and well rested is the most important thing you can do.

Starting from about 10 days out from your goal event, your fitness is as good as it’s going to get. The only things you can really control are fatigue, hydration and nutrition. Assuming you’re doing all the right things from a hydration and nutrition standpoint, the area that trips up many athletes is fatigue. Insecure athletes make the mistake of thinking they can squeeze in one more workout or test themselves in workouts that are supposed to be easy and end up tired on race day.

Tapering is important in the final preparation for one-day races. The concept is that reducing the training load allows for more rest and recovery in the days before a big event. This gives an athlete more energy for the big event and hence a better chance to perform at his or her best.

During the tapering process, which lasts one to two weeks for an athlete preparing for a one-day event, training duration usually decreases while intensity increases. Shorter rides with short (1-3 minutes) high-intensity efforts develop the ability to meet racing demands with out exhausting the rider before the event. For the one-day racer, like athletes in the Olympics, it’s important to include efforts at or above race intensity in the two weeks prior to competition.

Athletes need to be exposed to the speed and acute intensity of racing, but not the overall energy expenditure. Speed work, consisting of short, high-intensity training sessions, prevents high-end systems from detraining without causing excessive fatigue.

Being fresh is so important for one-day competitions like many Olympic events because there is no reason to save anything for the next day. Athletes need to be prepared to pour on the power and, depending on the sport, compete above lactate threshold repeatedly and for long periods of time. Take a cue from the athletes who recently won gold medals in Beijing, trust the fitness you have as your goal event approaches and turn your focus to tapering so you arrive on the start line as fresh as possible.