[Mattia]

Hi everyone and thank you for all the information present here in the forum and in the books.

I have a fairly specific question about the tapering period for my goal.

This is the first year for me where I have been able to follow a structured plan with success (thanks to Training for the Uphill Athlete) to achieve the dream of climbing the highest mountain in my alpine region (3558m) by the longest route with 2600m of positive elevation gain without any particular technical difficulties except for snow at the end (around 12 hours long).

I would like to know how to manage my last week since it seems there is a window of good weather on Thursday, July 25th and I wanted to take advantage of it while the climb was planned for early August. The schedule below hope will help you understand my situation:

• W -4 – Specific week – 2146m weekly vertical
• W -3 – Base week – 2376m weekly vertical
• W -2 – Specific week – 2554m weekly vertical
• W -1 – Recovery week – 1000m weekly vertical
• Current week – Until now just basic aerobic waiting for the weekend. The intention was to do another specific week and then two weeks of tapering

With the potential target being one week ahead, I am a little bit scared that it will be too much tapering (almost 3 weeks), but I don’t want to add stress in the last week.

Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks and please be patient with my English 🙂

[Scott Johnston]

I’m sorry to be slow responding since you are almost ready for your climb.  In a word….REST.

You will not lose fitness in fact with the training you have been doing, more rest will help.  We usually suggest for such a climb to taper for a week or more.  No hard training, specific or general within a week. DO not do anything that makes you tired.

Good luck on your climb. Sounds amazing.
Scott

[Mattia]

Thank you Scott. Unfortunately, we did not reach the summit due to snow condition but the performance was excellent with 2k of elevation gain and still feeling good and strong. Looking forward to another adventure.

[Author]

Posts