IronMan Tapering advice

[ross88guy]

I have an IronMan triathlon in two weeks time and have no idea what kind of training I should be doing over the next 14 days! Should i be slowly reducing my training or should I be giving it everything that I have up until a few days before the race?




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2011 Goals:
Sub 14 Hour IronMan Triathlon
Blog - Running Blog

[skoptic]

Hey Ross88

Nooooooooooo!!!! Don't give it everything you've got! Your next 2 weeks will not affect your overall fitness, you should be tapering for sure not going strong. You need your body to relax from all that hard training you (hopefully!) did

You should be reducing the distance of your sessions from 3 weeks out... but you should still keep the intensity where it was. This keeps your body in the racing frame of mind.. but allows it to relax. It's normal for people put on a little weight and start to feel a bit lethargic during taper... but don't worry, you need to arrive at the start line rested rather than happy you just nailed a 10 x 1km rep tempo session 2 days before!

Do a few brick sessions.. reduce your overall sessions per week.. and start visualising yourself crossing that line in under 14 hours The race only really starts on the marathon ... so lots of positive thought about dealing with heavy legs, and about getting your nutrition in ON THE BIKE (where its easier to digest / absorb)

90% of it is in the mind ... so get to the start happy and rested.. and you will be IRONMAN!!!!!!

p.s. which are you doing? really, really REALLY good luck!

[xrodolfox]

^ Good advice. That is all.

[MikayP]

ya definitely lower the training load. if your race is on a sunday id say take the friday completely off and just have a 10-15 minute bike spin on saturday

do you work in terms of zones, such as heart rate? either way the 2nd to last week your volume should be roughly 2/3s what youre used to but with the same intensity with your sessions as youre used too...or i would call that zone 3+ depending on the discipline. if you do interval sessions increase the rest time between the sets. the last week should be rather mellow and nothing lasting over 2-3 minutes over zone 3. when in doubt, ease off... for a taper id say the keyword is "Fresh". especially in the last week. eat a lot of fruit and get lots of sleep.

for my example of my 1/2 ironman racing I pay for a coach where most of my training weeks are usually 12-14 hours a week. 2nd to last week was 9.5 hours and then the last week was 5.5 hours.

too many people, even pros, the feel good the last week and when their training on the course they want to impress their competitors rather than saving it for rest day thinking that even if they feel good at the end of a workout that it wont impact their performance. an ironman brings out any weaknesses so make sure youre fully rested

i remember my first triathlon my idea of a taper was to take the last week totally off....not a good move.

if youre not sure feel free to post some of your training days and maybe we can help out