Many of us on the forum are tapering (or have recently tapered and raced). What “demons” do you face when tapering?
My biggest problem is as soon as I start tapering I notice little aches and pains showing up. Like all of the sudden I have a chronic pain somewhere that shows up after doing a short/easy 30 minute Run. Stuff that was never around when I was doing massive amounts of training volume and intensity.
Motivation and diet. I still haven’t solved these.
During big weeks, there is no chance to stray from my diet. Wake up early, quick healthy breakfast, workout, shower, work, second workout, dinner, shower, bed. During taper weeks I may not have a morning workout, extra time in the morning makes me think about eating more, a shorter evening workout gets me home earlier, I get bored watching TV and want to snack.
Also, I can focus on a 10-12 workout week. When workouts getting shorter and less frequent I just can’t get as motivated for them for some reason.
I need to sort these 2 things out.
Ditto on the aches and pains. Although mine are more like the early symptoms of overuse: I feel the ache prior to a workout but as soon as I’m warmed up they’re gone.
Exactly the same. I feel like a big piece of frozen chicken that is being pulled apart when I start a workout. After it warms up, I’m fine.
Self-doubt about own fitness and diet… And like SwBkRn44 i find it very hard to motivate myself for even the shortest of workouts, sometimes i think “how the he… did i manage 200km last week, can’t even do 20km without fading now…” … something like that… 
I just started my A race taper.
In need the self confidence to believe that the work I’ve put in is enough and not throw in a last minute tempo run of hill workout.
it’s definitely weight gain for me.
even with a controlled diet, i can’t keep the BF % down during the taper week.
Mine is spending too much time on ST and letting myself get worked up over, and then particiapting in, threads I otherwise would care less about (see IM LOU wetsuit thread)
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Mine is how much I enjoy tapering.
I know I’m not supposed to. I’m supposed to want to be out there going hard most days (even tho I just spent the last 7 months doing that and am very tired). I know I’m supposed to feel bad from withdrawal from heavy training. I know I’m supposed to be filled with self doubt about my fitness level (even tho I spent the last 7 months training hard most days) I know I’m supposed to want to go out there to do a hard workout to test my fitness…
but mostly I enjoy the reduced workouts, I enjoy looking back over my training log at the workouts I have done and comparing them with previous year’s workouts, I enjoy feeling like I did a pretty good job preparing for my A race and I enjoy looking forward to race week which is always fun and race day which is always an adventure shared with friends, some of whom I will meet for the first and only time that day.
For me the taper is like my glass is half full with water flowing into it.
Now, if you were to ask about race day demons, that is a whole other story
I am with you there.
I enjoy not having to do as much training SO MUCH that once the race happens I take weeks, even months to get started again.
Taper is the reward at the end of the journey and a chance to gain mental strength with rest.