So the hard work has been done, you've been sweating all over your turbo trainer for the last six months, you haven't seen your friends for ages unless they too are training for the same event, the last week before race is the fabled taper.
Athletes all look forward to taper week with some kind of rose tinted disillusionment as if it’s Utopia. It SHOULD be like that, it really should. It’s there to help you rest and recover before you lay everything on the line on race day however, in my experience it never works that way.
Firstly, you severely cut down your training load. Often this comes without any warning. Yeah ok, so it’s been on the calendar for months, but no one actually weaned you off training before that cliff arrived. It’s like a junkie coming off heroin. You twitch, you can’t sit still, you're literally itching to do things and you can’t. If you get on the bike to do a gentle ride it takes super human control not to tear the legs off everyone else just because you can.