Critique This Taper Week - Half Iron

Triathlon Forum
1

Final week before a Sunday HIM race…is this too much, too little or just about right?

Monday - Swim 30 mins - High Intensity Ints, Run 30 mins - easy Zone 1-2
Tuesday - Bike 60 mins - 3-4 X 90 Sec Zone 4-5 Ints, Run (transition) 15 mins Race Pace
Wednesday - Run 30 mins - Taper Repeats 3-4 X 90 Sec @ Race Pace, Swim 30 mins - High Intensity Ints
Thursday - Bike 45 mins - 3 X 90 Sec Zone 4-5 Ints, Run (transition) 15 mins Race Pace
Friday - Day Off
Saturday - Pre-Race Brick: Bike 30 mins with 3-4 Race Pace efforts, Run 15 mins with 3-4 Race Pace efforts

2

Looks pretty good…but I would make the Saturday workout a swim/bike/run.

Just do a 10 min swim in the rez, a 15 min bike with 2-3 short pick-ups to race pace and a 10 min run also with a couple of accelerations.

Then relax and prepare to enjoy one of my favorite races ever!! I am sooooo jealous!! :slight_smile:

G

3

What does your coach say?

4

How does it compare to what you’ve done for the past 4 weeks?

5

It represents about 30% of volume of where I peaked. The intervals closely represent the intensity over the past 3-4 weeks as well. Was doing a lot of longer Tempo and Threshold work in my longer workouts.

6

Coach says this is pretty much the “normal” taper routine for a HIM citing the fact that it is a 70% reduction in volume + race pace work to keep the intensity tuned + the fact that she started tapering me about 10 days ago.

Asking for second opinions on it because #1 - this is my first HIM and taper for this kind of race and #2 - to be honest my legs ache much worse than they did when doing 14-15 hours per week during Build/Peak phase.

7

Then it looks like you are exactly on track. Rest up, drink plenty of water, be ready for heat. See you there!!

8

“#2 - to be honest my legs ache much worse than they did when doing 14-15 hours per week during Build/Peak phase”

in my experience that means that you are doing it right
.

9

Looks good. I personally take the day before a HIM completely off.

10

Taper time you always feel like crap, so that’s normal.

Listen to your coach - you don’t need a bunch of guys here second guessing things and making you wonder if the taper should be different. Day off two days before is better than the day before, so your coach has it right.