DopeyBadger
Imagathoner
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2015
- Messages
- 10,345
How much to taper for a "B" race and to disrupt the training as little as possible?
The BratFest 5k is coming up on Saturday morning. I just had a peak week of training.
The BratFest 5k represents a "B" race with the Hot2Trot HM in 27 days being the "A" race. So I don't want to sacrifice a ton of training for the "B" race, but I also still want it to go well. Based on past history, the best way to attack a "B" race and lose the least off training, is to taper, and then have a massive training week the very next week to get the load back into "optimal". Since the timeframe is so short between these, this should help keep me from getting stale in the time between, but still allowing enough recovery/taper for the HM "A" race.
So my question to myself was, how much do I taper for the 5k and have I seen a relationship between "freshness" and performance? Originally, I was planning on having my "freshness" be a mere +5.5. A value of +5 to +25 is considered "fresh". So a +5 would be barely in the freshness zone.
So I pulled together all of the good data from the last several years combining Garmin VO2max at time of race, Race VDOT (for performance metric), the delta between the two, "freshness", and Temp+Dew. I chose Garmin VO2max because the data lines up well with trends in my HRvPace relationship. So a good measure of my current fitness relative to myself, not so much the actual value meaning much of anything for a predictive measure (necessarily speaking). The VDOT value is a good performance metric since it's a measured/calculated system. The difference between the two helps me determine how close a performance was to my HRvPace current fitness. Then freshness and Temp+Dew looking for a relationship.
The Dopey 2018 races were cold, so I just doubled the wind chill to get the T+D (not a perfect system, but good enough). The data is available for T+D for those races, but missing the wind factor I think kind of changes things for how cold those races really were relatively speaking.
So Garmin VO2max hit a peak of 58 for Bunny Head #1 and Dopey 2018. Otherwise, I mainly hang out around 55-56 when races come up. I'm at 56 right now, but remember weight is a component and almost every one of these races were between 157-165 pounds. From a Race VDOT standpoint, my 10k of 39:54 stands head and shoulders above the rest at 52.1. Only two other races were +50, the Bunny Head 5k and Dopey HM in 2018. My best performances from a Delta standpoint were the Dopey 10k and Lakefront Marathon 2017 which was a bit surprising to me since I felt that race really fell flat at the time. And then freshness and T+D.
The following graph represents the relationship between my "freshness" and the delta:
The first thing that stood out to me, is that there doesn't seem to be any associated trend. The dot way in the upper-right is the Chicago marathon. So well rested, but poor conversion. Not super surprising because the ankle injury robbed me of some vital long distance training. The other red dot above the blue line is the Dopey 5k with side stitches. So the two non-PR performances above +12 are explainable. I decided to check which races were PRs and marked those in yellow. A little bit of trend that the PR level performances all came with +10 freshness whereas the others did not. But from a relative standpoint of delta, there isn't much difference between PRs and non-PRs.
The following graph represents the relationship between my Temp+Dew and the delta:
More of a relationship seen in this one. It's interesting because the Garmin VO2max is somewhat reflective of current temp conditions in training. So to see an additional bump in performance based on reviewing temps is interesting. The PRs all seem to come when the temp is lower (not surprising), but they don't always represent the best conversions. There could be an argument made that the dot at around 50 and 8 isn't a good judge (Dopey 5K) because that race went poorly because of a side stitch and not really because of performance per se. The other dot at 80 and 10 is the Dopey Marathon which was only ~2 min off PR.
So the conclusion, I'd say it's somewhat cloudy. The temp definitely plays a role (not surprising). And the freshness does seem to matter some, but maybe not a huge factor? But it also looks like the best PR level performances came when the Freshness was higher than around +12. So I think I'll change up my training this week to go from a +5 to around a +17 and see what happens. The weather is currently predicted at a T+D of 126, but complete cloud cover. So anything better than a delta of 8 would be a delta PR under those conditions. If my Garmin VO2max remains a 56, then a 48 VDOT is a 20:40 5k (6:39 min/mile).
The BratFest 5k is coming up on Saturday morning. I just had a peak week of training.
The BratFest 5k represents a "B" race with the Hot2Trot HM in 27 days being the "A" race. So I don't want to sacrifice a ton of training for the "B" race, but I also still want it to go well. Based on past history, the best way to attack a "B" race and lose the least off training, is to taper, and then have a massive training week the very next week to get the load back into "optimal". Since the timeframe is so short between these, this should help keep me from getting stale in the time between, but still allowing enough recovery/taper for the HM "A" race.
So my question to myself was, how much do I taper for the 5k and have I seen a relationship between "freshness" and performance? Originally, I was planning on having my "freshness" be a mere +5.5. A value of +5 to +25 is considered "fresh". So a +5 would be barely in the freshness zone.
So I pulled together all of the good data from the last several years combining Garmin VO2max at time of race, Race VDOT (for performance metric), the delta between the two, "freshness", and Temp+Dew. I chose Garmin VO2max because the data lines up well with trends in my HRvPace relationship. So a good measure of my current fitness relative to myself, not so much the actual value meaning much of anything for a predictive measure (necessarily speaking). The VDOT value is a good performance metric since it's a measured/calculated system. The difference between the two helps me determine how close a performance was to my HRvPace current fitness. Then freshness and Temp+Dew looking for a relationship.
The Dopey 2018 races were cold, so I just doubled the wind chill to get the T+D (not a perfect system, but good enough). The data is available for T+D for those races, but missing the wind factor I think kind of changes things for how cold those races really were relatively speaking.
So Garmin VO2max hit a peak of 58 for Bunny Head #1 and Dopey 2018. Otherwise, I mainly hang out around 55-56 when races come up. I'm at 56 right now, but remember weight is a component and almost every one of these races were between 157-165 pounds. From a Race VDOT standpoint, my 10k of 39:54 stands head and shoulders above the rest at 52.1. Only two other races were +50, the Bunny Head 5k and Dopey HM in 2018. My best performances from a Delta standpoint were the Dopey 10k and Lakefront Marathon 2017 which was a bit surprising to me since I felt that race really fell flat at the time. And then freshness and T+D.
The following graph represents the relationship between my "freshness" and the delta:
The first thing that stood out to me, is that there doesn't seem to be any associated trend. The dot way in the upper-right is the Chicago marathon. So well rested, but poor conversion. Not super surprising because the ankle injury robbed me of some vital long distance training. The other red dot above the blue line is the Dopey 5k with side stitches. So the two non-PR performances above +12 are explainable. I decided to check which races were PRs and marked those in yellow. A little bit of trend that the PR level performances all came with +10 freshness whereas the others did not. But from a relative standpoint of delta, there isn't much difference between PRs and non-PRs.
The following graph represents the relationship between my Temp+Dew and the delta:
More of a relationship seen in this one. It's interesting because the Garmin VO2max is somewhat reflective of current temp conditions in training. So to see an additional bump in performance based on reviewing temps is interesting. The PRs all seem to come when the temp is lower (not surprising), but they don't always represent the best conversions. There could be an argument made that the dot at around 50 and 8 isn't a good judge (Dopey 5K) because that race went poorly because of a side stitch and not really because of performance per se. The other dot at 80 and 10 is the Dopey Marathon which was only ~2 min off PR.
So the conclusion, I'd say it's somewhat cloudy. The temp definitely plays a role (not surprising). And the freshness does seem to matter some, but maybe not a huge factor? But it also looks like the best PR level performances came when the Freshness was higher than around +12. So I think I'll change up my training this week to go from a +5 to around a +17 and see what happens. The weather is currently predicted at a T+D of 126, but complete cloud cover. So anything better than a delta of 8 would be a delta PR under those conditions. If my Garmin VO2max remains a 56, then a 48 VDOT is a 20:40 5k (6:39 min/mile).
Mostly Cloudy, Wind 6mph to 6mph 
