I'm building out my schedule for the year and I noticed my favorite ride last year is now only 6 days before a half ironman I want to do. How much will a century ride affect my performance in the 70.3? Do I have to plan on taking one of them easy?
How important is your 70.3? AAA?
Which century?
I have two 70.3’s planned this year oceanside and wildflower. I’m also doing ironman CDA for my 1st full this year. The century ride is the chico velo wildflower. Wildflower Triathlon isn’t my A race, but I do want to finish strong so that I’m building confidence for CDA
I do this fairly often; I rode a century each weekend for two weeks before doing Savageman in September. No real recovery problems. It’s the long runs that seem to exact a recovery cost for me. If you’re doing at least 50 mile rides routinely, you should be fine.
I did a 45-minute ride, 5:45 ride (it was only 90 miles but I did climb about 5,000 feet or more down and then up Big Bear, Calif.), the week before World’s Toughest Half duathlon and still had a great race. I think some of it depends on your fitness level. I was doing five hour rides each weekend and 12-18 hours total bike volume per week. If your weekend ride doesn’t normally include a century or close to it then it might be a bit much. If you are doing CDA then your weekend workouts are going to be fairly sizeable by WF and you can probably just reduce your training slighly during the week and then hammer the race in place of your normal weekend long ride/run.
Chad
depends how fit you are. Is a 100 mile ride a big deal for you?
If you really have to ask, then it will hurt triathlon race a lot. Since you know your body, you would not question a century ride if you knew you were strong enough to do it and also perform well at the race. It is the same sort of question as asking will a 5 mile jog hurt my race. The distance does not matter, the taxing of the body does.
Jimmy
Thanks. After reading what people wrote here I decided to sign up for it once registration opens. On that ride it is easy to adjust distance depending on what is approriate for my fitness level.
It depends on your training. If you have a substantial base and plenty of high intensity sessions you will do good. In fact, it might even help you. After the century you can start carbo-loading. But the key is to have a good amount of training. If it completely wipes you out I wouldn’t do it. But if a 100mile ride or even 70mile rides are part of your weekly training plan I would definitely go for it.
If you are doing a bunch of long rides before that I do not think it will be an issue. last year I did a century plus 4 or 5 weeks in a row before a 1/2 and had a huge pr. If ironman training is your goal that there is no reason you should not be able to ride long the week before a half and still feel fine. Now a marathon the week before would be an entirely different story.
Are you saying he should carboload for 5 days for a half IM. I respectfully disagree.
I agree with KendallF. The bike doesn’t require as much taper as per my experience. I did the HHH200K one week before an olympic last year and had my best bike split all year. I was also very well conditioned for cycling at the time and 100 flat miles wasn’t a big deal. And even if it’s a big deal now, you have plenty of time to train up for it. If this ride is one of your favorites (meaning you’ve done it before) then you know what you’re getting into. Good luck.
Under those circumstances I would. In fact, I would restrict the CHO intake in the days prior to the 100mile ride and then start CHO loading immediately post ride.
Now if your goal is to simply finish the race then you wouldn’t have to do that. But if you want to race your best and are putting out a decent amount of power (energy) on the bike I most definitely would.
Why do you disagree with a 5 day loading protocol if he spends 5-6hrs in the saddle 6days prior to his HIM?
Maybe I should back up a step…I’m guessing our definitions of carboload are different. My def. is an overload of calories, the bulk of which come from carbs. I’m guessing you mean to take in a more normal amount of calories but have most of them be carbohydrates?
Hey M–you’ll be fine doing both and it will be a good training block for IM CdA.
clm
With CHO loading I did in fact mean to increase the daily intake of calories while at the same time increase the percentage of CHO within the diet.
Whereas in the “CHO depletion phase” I would greatly reduce the total intake of CHO.