Peaking

It's was covered here in the release I have:

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Lore-Running-Timothy-D-Noakes/dp/088011438X]Amazon.com: Lore of Running (9780880114387): Timothy D. Noakes: Books[/ame]

...with citations and anecdotes.

Any chance of helping me out, then? Or do I have to buy your book?

34x29 said:

Any chance of helping me out, then? Or do I have to buy your book?

It's not my book.

Look up the following terms. Chronic training load (CTL), Acute training load (ATL) and Training stress balance (TSB).

CTL is basically how much training you can do on a day in day out basis.
ATL is how much training you've done in the past week or two.
TSB is the difference between the two, i.e. if you've done a lot more training in the past 2 weeks than you usually do your TSB is negative and you'll feel tired. If you haven't done much training in the past 2 weeks your ATL will be low and so your FSB will be positive.

That's just a summary, you'll get a much better description of the terms elsewhere!

Now, a taper is a reduction in ATL which means your FSB goes positive. The data suggests that having a positive FSB is good for producing a PB. Your day in day out performance I guess would be at a FSB of zero, which is probably fine but it would imply that you're not increasing your CTL which you should be if you want to get fitter! In a normal years training your FSB will be slightly negative for most of it as you build up the amount of training you do. Then you taper for an event to get your FSB positive, wreck everyone else because you have fresh legs then go back to building your CTL again.