BT Forum

First, there’s no ”speeding up” recovery.  Being aggressive in the prologue will significantly affect your second day race.  Even being very conservative will likely have *some* impact on the OLY, much of which will show up during the run.  

There are plenty of people who successfully race back-to-back although “race” may be a misnomer.  Back in 2010, I did a Friday night marathon and Saturday 30 mile trail run.  My strategy was to go real easy on the marathon, walking up hills, etc. The nice thing is that marathon was a “prediction run” so no watches, GPS, course clock, and the “winner” was the last person to finish before midnight.  My running partner and I finished in 5:18 where we often ran <9min/mile pace and had run a 4:10 marathon.  

My suggestion is to plan your prologue goals and race strategy around hitting time targets (like road rallying).  Maybe you can normally swim 250 yards in 5 minutes and run 8:00 miles...make your prologue goals 6:00 and 10:00 and hit those consistently.  Think of it as an exercise in “race discipline “  where you’re managing early exertion.  

This depends totally on you: What your level of fitness is, how often you're accustomed to putting out max efforts, and how rested you are going in. And maybe your age...

When I was at the top of my tri game, it wasn't too strange to do back-to-back sprint tris in a weekend. Sometimes performance on the second day was better than the first. Ah, to be young and indestructible.

When I was bike racing, we often would have three to four racing days a week in peak season, with a criterium on the last day. My fitness was to the point where it would take a good hour to warm up to be ready to race. And yes, besides a full-time job, bike riding/racing was pretty much ALL I did... We won't go into the effects on the rest of my life...

No way I could do that now.

So I say go for it, see how it goes, and warm up slowly into that second day.

Good advice above and I'll add that many training plans have a day-before-the-race short effort with some intensity (though I think you're pushing the limit/definition of "short" because you also need to account for some warm up and cool down).  Be sure to taper well and I would take off the day before the prologue for sure.