Hi Kayleigh! I was just wondering in what universe does it make sense to increase work load a week before your championship race? We’ve been having one practice a day all year, then the Monday before our race we start going twice and by Wednesday we were all exhausted. The day before our race our coach has us do 14k of steady state rowing with some full pressure pieces thrown in. Then the day of the race our coach has us wake up early so we could do another 4K steady state before racing. How is this logical in anyway shape or form??

Hmm. I really don’t have a good answer because I don’t understand his approach either. Ramping up the volume the week of your race is the exact opposite of tapering, which is what you should have been doing going into the weekend. That’s what we did last week in the lead up to Sprints on Sunday – the intensity of the workouts was still up there but the volume steadily decreased as we closed out the week.

Did anyone ever ask your coach what his thought process was in doing this? Obviously you shouldn’t be all confrontational about it but if everyone is confused about the training plan and sore/exhausted 48-72 hours before your championship race, I think that at least justifies a conversation. I wish I had a better answer but I’m with you guys – this doesn’t make sense to me.