I'm wondering why is that after tapering for a week, it is hard physically to come back and run a good race in 2 weeks. Here's what we do. Coach has us work hard up to the week before our conference meet. The week of conference we taper and run about half our normal mileage with short speed sessions on Mon/Wed. The week after conference we go back up a bit and then run less miles. The regional is usually off for most of us. Why the crash?