Apples recommendation has nothing to do with preserving the battery's life expectancy. It only helps the iPad calibrate the battery's remaining charge percentage calculation.
Given the nature of the newest generation lithium-ion batteries, and the expected usable life of mobile devices, worrying about when and how much to charge the battery is not worth the headache.
Barring outright battery failures (which do happen), your iPad will most likely still have 80% of it's battery capacity (or more) after two years of use. And that's if you use it a lot, like almost a full discharge every day.