A very wise coach once offered the following advice on
championship meets:
Don’t leave your race in the warm up pool.
When athletes get to their A race/taper
event/championship meet, they may go in feeling unsure of their paces in light
of the reduced training volume and some (typical) not-so-stellar days during
taper. They go and do some pace work during warm up, maybe repeating 50s or
100s until they see a time they like…and then get up on the blocks for their
race already fatigued.
Not ideal.
It’s tempting to do this all throughout taper. Last week,
my legs finally started to repair a bit after a lot of the work I did this
spring and summer, and I hit the 5-hour Saturday brick able to push some power
numbers that I hadn’t seen on long rides in a long time.
And then I held back. And held back even more on the 2
hour run after, even though I felt like I could have flown.
Because nobody wants to leave their race on MacArthur
Boulevard.
Monday: Rest day.
Tuesday: In the morning, 75 minutes of spinning in zone 2
(134W) on the trainer. In the evening, a 3600 meter swim that involved an old
favorite set: 200s threshold on 4:00. I hit 2:55-2:59 for the first 10, and
then cut it off at 12 total when the last two were 3:03s.
Wednesday: Speedwork on the treadmill: 5 miles including
1600m (7:10)-2x800m (3:36s)-4x400 (1:46s). Then a late flight to Minneapolis to
work.
Thursday: 5.41 miles on a hotel treadmill (9:14 pace).
Better than potentially getting lost in a city I don’t know at all.
Friday: Rest day. (Yes, again. This is one of many
reasons that I dislike taper.)
Saturday: Last big brick before race day – 46 miles (3
hours) of biking, followed by 12.61 miles of running (2 hours, 9:26 pace). The
bike portion felt much better than usual, and I was able to average 148W
(normalized) without pushing too hard, and the run felt very, very easy. The
hardest part was holding back to ensure that I didn’t overdo the effort and
compromise my taper.
Sunday: 3800 m (2.4 miles) of swimming in 1:03:14. Not
too hard of an effort, and good practice for focusing during the swim come race
day.
Sage advice. You sure sound ready for IMMT.
ReplyDeleteGreat advice. I heard once that you should finish every workout feeling like you could do one or two more reps (of whatever you were doing). Wise advice...every run is not a race!
ReplyDeleteYOU ARE SO READY FOR IMMT. And I echo was Ashley wrote above; my coaches always say when you shut down workouts during taper, you should feel warmed up and ready to keep going. You're going to crush it this weekend!
ReplyDeleteI remember my coach saying similar things. You are going to do awesome and I cannot wait to hear how it goes!
ReplyDeletedefinitely the right move. but it sounds like you're topping off the tank and will be ready to explode (in a good, powerful way) at IMMT :)
ReplyDelete