Taper vs de-train

1-2 weeks of no training and you will detrain / not be optimally prepared for your race.  Will you be completely back to square 0, no.  But you're not doing yourself any favors at all.

Make sure to let the air out of your bike tires race morning, don't bother with nutrition, just drink water, and hammer the heck out of the bike. 

There is no glory that I see in knowingly setting yourself up to fail. 

Perhaps your motto should be "Nothing fails like self sabotage."

y

The question still remains....how much is too much and how much is too little?  Should I limit my runs to 6 miles or 2 miles?  Should I cut my Saturday bike ride down to 3 hours or 1 hour? 

~Mike

I am doing IMLOU on the 31st. Here is my 3week taper. I will work short intervals of 5-6 minutes of zone3-4 work on the bike and run but not much. I am just trying to trust the training schedule and hope It all works out. Good luck all.

8/11 off day

8/12 swim 3500m, Run 45min

8/13 bike 45min, Run 30min

8/14 swim 4000m, Bike 1hr

8/15 swim 3500m, run 1hr

8/16 bike 4hrs, run 30min

8/17 bike 1 hour, run 2hrs

8/18 off day

8/19 swim 3600m, run 45min

8/20 bike 45 min, run 15min

8/21 swim 3400m, bike 1hr

8/22 swim 3500m, run 45min

8/23 bike 2hrs, run 30

8/24 bike 1 hr, run 1hr

8/25 off day

8/26 swim 3500m, run 45min

8/27 bike 45min, run 15min

8/28 travel day

8/29 swim ohio river 15-20min. 45min bike, 15min run.

8/30 15min swim ohio river, 15min run/bike. Hydrate!

I originally typed up a longer response, but decided to go with somewhat shorter version. IM Training happens over months (and preferably years). You're not going to make yourself faster in that last week by doing a 1 hour bike vs a 30 minute bike, etc. We tend to be Type A obsessive control freaks that are looking for magic bullets - there are none. Lower your volume, limit intensity to shorter durations, and allow yourself to rest and recover from the brutality you've subjected your body to for the many months leading up to the IM. You cannot make yourself more fit in the last week, but you can limit the recovery that your body is attempting.

Good thoughts.  I wish you had opted for the longer version.

~Mike 

I see your coach is smart and subscribes to my taper methodology:

"What you do can't help you but what you don't do can hurt you."

but I won't post my taper graph here again...(ha ha ha)...you can view it on the other post .

I am the opposite since it is difficult for me to accept the taper and now woth Ironman for the first time, I need to accept 2 weeks tapering which will be the incoming 2 weeks.

Coming to your question, about running, 1 week is not enough to loose performances if you just jog few times. The second week can be "killing" already if you don't throw in some intensity.

For the bike I would assume the same but I have little experience.

For the swimming I would say that it is more a sport where tecnique plays a big role so 2 weeks I would be more relaxed.

Just for your info, next week 3 training days with intensity and in the last week of the taper, just "hard" training day on wednesday. 

I wondered this too and asked my coach about it.

I was on a 3 week taper and still felt pretty crappy and fatigued going into week 2 so we shortened the 12 mile run to 8, pulled a run and shortened the others from 5 to 3. Originally my 2nd week taper week had I think 22-25 miles of running. Running is what fatigues me the most and I think I ran about 13-14. I started feeling better at end of week 2 which is about now for you IMKY folks.

My coach had me do higher % of intenisty than normal and cut length down of my workouts. He said current research shows best way to stay sharp and also allow me to recover from the fatigue. I had only one rest day a week and did doubles most days..either swim/bike or swim/run. I also worked on mental stuff to get to a good place come race day. Training was done best thing I could do for me was to mentally strong and positive so I could do my best come race day.

What we did worked great for me. I did 3 week bike/run taper and kept building my swim so I was swimming 5x a week (I'm worst at swimming) and did my last 2.4 mile swim about 10 days out from my IM. 

There is NO one right answer. Our bodies respond to the stress of training differently and what you have to think is in terms of positive (training adaptation) and negative (fatigue). There are studies done about this and in general it indicates an athlete can begin realizing the positives effects (benefit) of one session as soon as 4-5 days and as long as 7-8 days. OTOH the negatives or the time it will take you to recover for a given session can be as short as hours (12-24 hrs) and as long as days (10+ days). All this depends directly on your specific physiology and fitness level.  

In terms of de-training there are also studies (Coyle is one of them) in which it indicates an athlete begins to lose training adaptations as soon as 7 days and it tend to peak at around 21 days but again this varies from athlete to athlete. For that reason through taper times the key factor is to stress the body just enough so it can maintain the produced adaptations gained through months of training but easy enough that is not stressing the body to the point it forces it to further adapt and subsequently induced too much fatigue.

So what does this mean for someone planning taper for IM? Well, the best approach is to pay attention to your training and keep a log. In that way you can easily estimate how fast it takes you to recover from long/intense sessions, how often do you see breakthrough sessions/days and when you do begin to slow down/plateau after easy training or inactivity. A 3 week taper might be good for some while too long for others. Taking a few days off might be great for some but really bad for others. Doing a 3 hr ride the week before IM might be ‘easy’ for some but ‘hard’ for others.

The message here is that you just need to do enough to keep the hard earned fitness you accomplished in weeks of training but not too much that get to your race day fatigued/unrecovered. But also it is VERY possible end up detraining and losing that hard earned fitness by ‘resting’ too much

I believe people adhere to the 3 week taper advice just cuz it become sort of famous by Friel as a general advice and IMO some of the coaches following it either don’t understand training adaptations/detraining very well, don’t know their athletes very well or are too lazy to learn/pay attention.

Excellent post!  Thanks.  This is very helpful!

~Mike

that's great news and I did not know that!  can you point me to where I can read up more about this fact? 

 thx!

Good read!  Thanks for posting this.

~Mike

x2

Thanks! 

Bravo!
Very well put.