Well, I would not go with my approach, but I biked to work all of last week and swam a few times. then on Sat (6 days out from LP), I rode 4 hours with my buddy Barry Dmitruk (he is getting ready for Wisconsion) after doing 10:27 in LP. Ran on Sunday easy and have been riding to work etc and swimming again. This morning did the hard Wed morning 90K ride. Went 4:20 min up the Fortune timed climb, which is 12 seconds off my PB, but yes, I could feel the hills of LP still in my legs when I tried to really go hard. I had to hold back. Until today, I kept my HR sub 140 for all workouts, most were around 110-130.
I eat ground flaxseed with my oatmeal every morning. It is natural anti inflammatory and I credit it for my ability to recover fairly quickly (that and 21 years of base). Finally, I did hold back at LP for most of the race as I was scared of ending up in the medical tent (12:30 blowup in 2003). Turns out that by holding back and taking it “easy” I actually had a better average speed and slowed down less and had a PB of 10:33.
In short, I think it is all personal. I think I can live OK on the Joe Boness Lite program, but that is just me. I think Puskas’ rules of thumb are good. I am sure I would be much better in the long run, if I took that route, but I just can’t. I’m like a deer, I need to be outdoors moving.
Edit: As a point of reference, I did my Olympic Tri PB in 1994, 2 weeks after IMC. IMC was 10:41, Olympic Tri was 1:59. In between I did several 1-3 hour rides and some 30-60 min swims. No running.
I think if you are well trained, the long drawn out tapers and long drawn out recovery periods can be substantially reduced and in many cases, the long drawn out tapers are detrimental as your body goes into shutdown mode.
Mitch Gold at Counterpoint Coaching wrote about this. I experimented with this in the past year:
http://www.counterpartcoaching.com/taper.htm.
and had excellent results. As Mitch says, it is all about consistency. Volume is regarded as a bad thing. People throw around the words junk miles etc etc.
The key as Mitch Gold says, is consistency. Your body gets just as messed up with YoYo volumes going from 5 hours per week up to 22 as it does going from 20 hours per week down to 10, 5, Ironman and nothing. I think it is OK to train if your body and mind is wanting to.
And thanks to the other posters. I needed to hear to take it easy. I know I shouldn’t likely work out but sometimes I need to hear it from someone else.