I’m training through the rest of December and tapering for two weeks hoping to peak at at meet on January 14th - I’ve never tapered for swimming before! Today I did a workout that just felt sooooo good, and I’ve been swimming a fair amount and my arms/shoulders are all achy and tired. And I got out of the water thinking, if it feels this good when I’m tired then what does it feel like to swim when you’re all rested?! I can’t wait for my meet now, I’m sooooo excited!!!
two week taper? where did you get the schedule? everyone is different with taper, and you may need 2 weeks, but from my experience that is wayyyyy too long. most distance swimmers will start reducing yardage about 7-10 days out. it is gradual. if you were a 50 sprinter, i’d say more taper, but not for the 500. how much do you average a day during peak training?
Racing when fully tapered is awesome. The important thing toi remember is that when tapering, the intensity of workouts goes up, but the volume is draastically decreased.
I’ve never tapered before so I just guessed and figured two weeks would work? I make everything up as I go along.
7ooo yds/day during peak training.
“Racing when fully tapered is awesome”
yes, I’m sure it is! What does ‘awesome’ feel like? Today felt awesome. So tapering feels better than awesome?
Maybe there are just not words for it, and I’ll have to wait and see. ooo I have a hard time being patient
Don’t worry about the two weeks, I know some people that taper for a month. It is really individual, and a lot of people often don’t taper enough. There are lots of stories about guys that taper for NCAA’s, swim crappy, and a month later after partying and screwing off, swim out ot their heads at nationals, or some other big meet. I would liken a taper, shaved feeling, to one of having sex without a condom… It’s just pure skin baby…(-;
Typically you don’t want to feel too good this early - you shouldn’t be feeling good until the day or two before your meet. My memories of college swimming were of 10 to 12 day long tapers where you gradually begin to feel good during workouts - focusing more on speed work. I also remember having an aching feeling - especially legs! Also, keep in mind a large part of the tapering is mental. Start preparing for the meet mentally as you start tapering.
Probably not what you want to hear, but when i was tapering in college for states, swimming felt awkward. I always felt like i was losing fitness. Its a weird place where the intensity is high, but not quite racing… and you arent swimming enough yards to wear you out.
But my race times were amazingly fast compared to my in season times… so that felt awesome.
“Typically you don’t want to feel too good this early”
I just had a really good workout today. The past ten days or so I’ve been swimming alright, but feeling fatigue: try as I might, I couldn’t swim fast enough to hit that fast, painful pace. Did today though 
I guess I hope tomorrow feels crappy, then?! lol.
“I would liken a taper, shaved feeling, to one of having sex without a condom… It’s just pure skin baby.”
I am not quite sure how to respond to that! I think that’s the best answer yet.
Now I really cannot wait until January 14
Tapers are very individual. You still have time, so I wouldn’t be too nervous if I felt good right now, you may just be finding some good form as you break your body down (like a cyclist). If you feel good in a week or two, then you should be nervous. My shave and taper meets in college were on a Thursday, and I didn’t like feeling good until Wednesday.
Also, make sure you aren’t biking or running during your taper, but you probably already knew that.
“Also, make sure you aren’t biking or running during your taper, but you probably already knew that.”
really? no biking or running? dammit. I hate resting.
But it sounds like it’s worth it…
Since you’ve never tapered before, and don’t have a coach guiding you, you’ll just have to give it a try. Choose one week , 10 days, 2 weeks or 3 weeks. And just go with it. Don’t doubt that its too much or not enough. If you’ve never done it before, how can you know. It took me a few tries to get it right, and I had great coaches helping me. And I didn’t always hit it right on. Believe in yourself, and when the time comes, get out there and race hard and have fun.
I should clarify a bit. I haven’t swumn competitively in a long time, but this is the best recollection I have. The tapering period itself kinda sucks. You are nervous, hoping you hit the peak just right, the workouts get more and more intense, and more nitpicky about a 10th of a second here and there. Your life is disrupted, we had a rule that there was to be no doing anything non-essential, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Your sleep patterns may suffer, since you no longer have the normal workload.
The payoff comes at the end. Getting to the big meet and shaving the morning of the first heats, or before finals for the guys who were fast enough to make finals without shaving (Not me). When you finally get that first heat under your belt and realize you just swam 3s faster for a 100 free than you did all year. That is what feels awesome.
As for the act of swimming itself, I never felt like tapering felt any better. Having shaved down certainly does feel better, but not tapering so much. for the one or 2 meets I swam tapered but not shaved, I didn’t feel any different in the water. It is the end result that feels so good.
A 2 week taper is about right for a distance swimmer. The sprinters did a 3 week taper at my university, but the taper actually is not all that noticeable for the first week. Maybe 500 - 1000 fewer yards per practice. The last 3 days are basically down to warmup, a few sprints at race pace, and warmdown.
In college I tapered 4-6 weeks.
Just so I’m not misleading anyone - it’s not that big of a meet. I’m not swimming for my college team, this meet is actually a USMS swim meet at my home pool; I’ll be home for Xmas break. There are some fairly good local swimmers, but it is highly likely I’ll be the only 19 year old racing!
My reasoning for training and tapering for it is that I love to swim, and have been getting some good times in workouts, so I figured why not train in a focused way, taper, and see how fast I can swim.
It’s really only a big deal to me 
and I’m okay with that! It will be fun and hopefully I’ll swim fast.
yeah, shaving must make a big difference for a guy!!!
“Since you’ve never tapered before, and don’t have a coach guiding you, you’ll just have to give it a try. Choose one week , 10 days, 2 weeks or 3 weeks. And just go with it. Don’t doubt that its too much or not enough. If you’ve never done it before, how can you know.”
I DO know that I took a couple weeks off in the beginning of November due to what I thought was a shoulder injury (it wound up being a muscle knot that a massage therapist worked out), and when I got back in the pool I hadn’t lost any fitness. I’m hoping that experience will reassure me when I start swimming less and worry that I’m getting out of shape!
Two weeks just seemed right with the end of the month / start of a new year, I guess.
You probably will not have a lot of competition at your local USMS meet - but you can (and will swim fast. I’d guess you’ll be much faster than most women at the meet. If you really love to race, and your schedule and finances can swing it, you should consider going to USMS nationals in May. I think they are in Seattle. You’ll get some good competition there.
If you really hit a taper, you can swim amazingly fast. But, it’s really easy to swim either too easy or too hard during a taper, and it took me three years to figure out how to balance that. Once I did, I never dropped less than 8 seconds in the 500 from my best dual meet time of the year (usually only 10 days out from the race) and once dropped 12. A really good example of what a good taper can do for you is how it affects your 200 fly, which is a horrid race to swim when you are really tired from training, but a really fun race to swim shaved and tapered.