First real taper in a while!

I've got one practice left for my taper before heading to CA tomorrow evening. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure this is my first proper taper since 2019. No Nats in 2020, the ones in 2021 were pushed back and effectively midseason meets so I trained through them, and last spring we went on vacation just a couple weeks before the meet, so my schedule was thrown off. And then I didn't taper last summer, primarily because I wasn't really training.

So far in this taper I've been focusing on my 200s free and back, more so on the latter.

The last time I actually *trained* for backstroke was back in 2018, so I've been pretty rusty while doing back this season. That said, with Saturday's backstroke taper set and this morning's backstroke taper set, I'm getting pretty pumped for the 200 back! Saturday I did a lot of good underwater work and then a 100 trying to hit my target pace for the 2nd 100 of the 200. I hit a 1:11, which was faster than my target time of 1:13ish! Moving forward to today, I did 3x50 on 1:30 aiming for 2nd 50 of the 200 pace, followed by another 100 trying to hit 200 back half pace. I held :33 on the 50s and went 1:10 on the 100.

Looking at both of those practices, my backstroke times have consistently been a bit faster than I expected. Given that it's been 5 years since I actually trained backstroke, I hope it's a sign that my stroke is rounding back into form more than I expected and not that I can't figure out my pacing (e.g. thinking I'm going 200 pace but actually going 100 pace, etc).

Free has been much less of a focus for me, but I've been pretty happy with my times while doing similar sets. Unlike with back, they haven't been faster than I expected, but they've mostly been right on what I expected, so I'll take it. My free stroke doesn't feel as clean as my back, but it feels good enough.

Tomorrow I'll change gears and do some IM sprint work and transition turn work.

All in all, I'm happy to be doing a legit taper again and happy with how it's going!