Does 15K TT count as a taper?

BIKE: 1 hr, 20 miles. Another TT, this one in 24:44:96. Humph, 24:45 really.
Outbound: some headwind, 21.4 mph ave and 156 bmp ave
Inbound: some tailwind, 23.0 mph, 165 bpm

Had a longer than usual warmup of 28 mins, did multiple 20s fast, 40s rest intervals. The wind was comparably still, so I was gunning for a PR tonight. Also, since I'm tapering, I should be fresher than usual. Right?

The outbound was uneventful, focused on good form and no mashing. The inbound was a different story. I think I saw someone turn around early! A cheater?!? I was just settling back in after turning around and I sighted the road ahead. A short distance up, a rider also turned around and headed for the finish. One possibility is that it was an earlier racer cooling down. If that was the case, I would easily catch him as cool-downs are done at +22mph. I set my sights on catching this guy. I wanted to know if they clocked a time for him, or if he really was racing.

I never caught him. In fact, this guy dusted me and I barely saw him again. And I was tearing up as best I could, likely wasting a lot of energy in doing so. While riding, I tracked the number of riders who passed me (2) and those behind me (2). I took a look at the official's ridesheet, and found that I was rider #29 and there were 34 riders. There should have been a 5th rider. Very suspicious!

A cheater?!? On a fun time trial?!? Granted, it's reported to USAC so the results are made public, so maybe this jerk (assuming he was in fact cheating) wanted good numbers to show? He shaved a good 1-2 minutes of his time, so his numbers would have looked good.

This really fired me up on the drive home. How does a guy who cheats live with himself? Does he have kids, and what does he teach them? Aren't these results now tainted in his mind, does he feel any guilt about this? Why do I care? He's not competing against me, and it's a TT so the race is really about the clock. There's no official at the turnaround, so it's an honesty policy. I care because he's taking advantage of the fact that the people putting this race on week after week trust us to do the right thing, and we trust each other to do the right thing. He's violating the trust granted to him as a participant.

Ugh. I don't want to get all fired up again, so let's drop it. And simply say that I hope it wasn't what it looked like, and that he really was cooling down.

And no, I didn't set a new PR. Still 13 seconds long.