Looks like this summer i’ll be going out of town for 5-day the Wednesday thru Monday 2 weeks prior to a priority 1/2IM. This is not my A-priority race but one where I would like to have a good showing. During travel I will be able to run as much as necessary and very best be able to ride on a hotel bike or swim in hotel pool if available; however will be bouncing around internationally so don’t want to rely on being able to swim/bike. How can I prepare for this to minimize my race prep; should I overload swim/bike before and after trip and just run during, should I use it as an early taper, etc. Thoughts?
just run on all days you would normally train, and forget about the bike or swim unless there is a good possibility to do these sports. 5 days away is not that long, you will get away with it. And count these days as taper so train more or less straight into the half. 5 days away wont mess up a good few months of training.
Do a little (!) harder than normall training the days before you leave and don’t try to do volume during traveling but just a few runs.
This is more of a head game then a physical issue. You are not going to get out of shape in 5 days.
Just adjust your training so one of the 5 days would have been a normal off day then you are only down to 4 “missed” days. Depending on how often you swim, you are probably only be missing a day or two of swimming so its no big deal. It sounds like you won’t be missing much if any running so just enjoy running in new cities. It might be helpful to hit the exercise bike once or twice to keep you legs loose and mentally satisfy yourself you are not taking too much time off.
IMHO even if you took the 5 days totally off it would not affect you much as long as you are mentally tough enough not to let it get to your head. (it might even help if you an A type trainer and not too good at resting/tapering). A bigger issue is eating well and getting enough sleep while on a 5 day road trip. Don’t push working out too hard if the travel/work schedule itself is tough.
I did some short travels lately. And I learnt that keeping normal work out frequency is important for training after traveling. So if I would normally train 4 out of the 5 days I would try to do this during traveling too. And I wouldn’t care to run only instead of biking or swimming. And I would keep the runs short. Maybe one decent hard run in the middle of traveling if sleep and recovery permits. Otherwise simply wait untill back home. Biggest problem of 5 complete days off is that it will also mess up training after traveling. Just a few short runs and you won’t have this and you will be fine from the day you are back home.
swim - you can get some stretch cords. Also, if time will allow, you can probably find a local pool. But, stretch cords… search on here how to use them, we’ve had threads about it before. I think it’s Gordo’s site that has the link of how to use them.