Many of you just did Ironman LP. Some are racing Wisconsin in 5 weeks. Some doing IMC in 3 weeks. This whole taper thing is a big can of worms filled with half truths and myths. I am not sure the conventional wisdom of tapering actually works.
I’ve raced 9 times this year (4 XC ski races…up to 100K in 6:17, 1 marathon, 2 half Ironman, an Ironman and a 1/3Ironman…Muskoka). I only did a true taper for the marathon and I sucked at that race as my body went into shutdown mode. For all the rest, I did a 2 day micro taper and generally felt good for all.
Before Ironman LP I did 16 hour of training the week before and 8 hours on race week…no long workout though. All easy with some Ironman race intensity pickups, but still easy. I felt strong until race day. First time ever that I did not feel fat, slow, sluggish and generally off kilter. I also had a PB.
The Tour de France cyclists still do 3 hours on their rest day so they don’t go into shut down mode. So why is the conventional wisdom to go into a long drawn out taper. Most at the carbo meal are sick of sitting around and want to get the race over with, instead of truly looking forward to it.
I listen to my body. If I am feeling tired the week before a race I take 2 to 3 days completely off. If I am feeling strong I just do some easy days for the last 2 or 3.
The big taper leaves me feeling slow and out of sorts.
I just go with how my body feels. I never “taper”. This would assume I had lots of time to put in training per week. Guess I am always in the taper mode. But, I do stop when I get tired, which I still am after the VM. I try to take 2 days totally off before any race.
I know I felt better 2 weeks before LP than I did at LP and I followed my taper to a capital T. I felt pretty flat on my bike that is for sure, but my swim was really good. (for me).
This year will be a year I am going to do everything different so I think I will try the no taper approach as well. I think it is true what the article says, nobody trains the same so everyone lilely tapers different as well. Perhaps elite athletes are the ones who actually can figure out what their body needs to excel the best while the rest of us fudge it?
The main point that Mitch seems to make is that if you feel studly on your huge training weekend (say 6 hour ride 30 min run on Sat plus 2.5 hour run on Sunday) with only a microtaper, then perhaps your body might be ready to do this at an Ironman and even do better than the drawn out 3 week thing with lots of sitting around…
Tapering is an art, not a science. Everyone responds differently to a taper, and what works for some people simply does not work for others. It’s really easy either to work too hard, or to rest too much. It took me three years to figure out how I should taper for a championship swim meet. It took me about four marathons to figure out I probably need a two week instead of a three week taper for a marathon, given my training mileage (on the low end).
If one method does not work, then you should simply try something new. If you accept advice from someone whose first Half IM is Saturday, it sounds to me like you might need to work harder during your taper than you have been doing in the past.
In theory that sounds like it should work. Mitch obviously has tested this as well and seems to be able to quantitively show it works (for him). Perhaps it has something to do more with people who have HUGE base to work with. You and I would assume Mitch have some big base and would “taper” much differently than someone who isn’t able to do the amount of work you guys can do. I would bet there is something to this theory and it would be interesting to apply it to triathletes right across the board from a 9 hour finisher to a 15 hour finisher.
I know I am going to try it.
Mitch is a bright guy, a good coach and a studly athlete. Anybody feeling strong while doing the 9hr weekends described is pretty studly!
I go into an IM about like Dev – 15-16hrs and 7-8hrs. But I think it’s important to consider what we are training like 6 weeks out. If you are laying down 30hrs/wk like most elites, then you may need to freshen up. If you are doing 15hrs/wk you may not need to change much at all. Then consider age, ability to recover, whether you are orthopedically sound and whether you are best served by resting chirping body parts.
Additionally, when contemplating using successful aspects of another athlete’s training, we might consider that extremely fit athletes can do almost anything pre-race and get away with it to some extent. It doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t go even faster if they handled a season or a taper differently. I am amazed at how differently successful triahtletes often do things. However, at the very top and most pointy ends of the field, most elite do big volume and taper.
I think for the time challenged or physically challenged athletes who are not able to do big volume – lesser or no taper may work very well. Just as additional intensity may suit an athlete who has only 14hrs/wk to train.
Fitness comes from training. Race-day form comes from the taper. After a good taper, your form peaks. After hitting that form peak, your fitness drops. Taper/peak too soon, and you go downhill.
A 4-6 week buildup of training stress (volume, mostly) followed by 5-7 days with a substantial decrease in volume (but a maintenance of some intensity) is the most time-tested approach to the taper – across the spectrum of aerobic sports.
Somehow, the idea of a 3-week taper got stuck into Ironman lore. Mark Allen said it worked for him, so I guess that’s where it came from. Crazy thing for an AG athlete to do, IMO. You can lose huge amounts of fitness in those last two weeks.
Markus, I think you have to scale it relative to your own volumes that you have been maintaining. I think I would be shelled if I did a 112mile ride three days out from a half Ironman like Mitch and the follow up with a 13 mile run the day before the race, although, I have done a 21K run the day before a half Ironman and still run 1:27 (4:30 flat for the race)…but no huge 112 mile ride 3 days out.
The main point seems to be: don’t do anything substantially differently for the race than you do for your regular training. So no going from 20 hours to 5 hours, or from 10 to 2. More like 20 to 12, or 10 to 6 might be more tuned to what your body is expecting.
I agree with you. I’ve done 3 IMs and on my third one I did a two week taper instead of three and I felt much better than the previous two…plus I set a huge PR. I did 14 and 6 hours of training in the final two weeks before the race. My Oly PR comes at the end of a tough training block with no rest days. I’m used to working out often and if I take too many days very easy or off I get very sluggish.
For IM, it seems that if I take a serious week of very little training maybe 4 weeks before the race for recovery (this is where my body shuts down and starts to feel like crap) and then get back in to the training groove in the final few weeks I seem to feel much better on race day. I’m always willing to experiment though with new ideas, etc.
I guess in essence I did the one week taper (8 hours, some race intensity pickups beffore LP). Makes sense that I felt good.
I remember for IMC 1992, Julieanne White did the Orillia Half Ironman one week out and ran faster then Fleck (I think…something like 1:20 flat…I’ll have to check race results) and then went out the next weekend and went sub 9:30 in Penticton.
I agree on all accounts. Now that I think about it, the week leading up to plaicd, I swam the course 3 times in that week. That was the most I had swam consistently in about 6 months, and I felt great swimming during the race. Now I just have to carry that over to other aspects
M~
IMLP was my first IM. I did the 3 week taper and had my worst century+ ride all year. In fact, I started to suffer and had to back off quite a bit. I’m also doing IMF in a couple of months. I’ll probably do 2-3 week taper on the running/swimming and 1-1.5 week taper on the bike. Swam great (for me) and the run went very well considering my lack of training, but the bike was supposed to be my strong suit and I had nothing… I won’t taper that long again.
I’ll start by admitting I did not read the article - but did read all the post
I’ve been through a good 25 solid, full out tapers in my athletic career (swimming through college and tris) - I’ve had every experience from fantastic to utter failures.
The statement that tapering is an art is full on - there is no one right way to taper
Tapers are VERY personnel - each person needs to taper in a different way that best suits their body, what type of traing they have doen in both the short (1 year) and long term
I don’t think taper simply means stop training OR cut volume by 70%+ - that alone is not tapering it is quitting
I believe any time you ‘purposefully with the intent of resting the body to perform better’ adjust volume and intensity by more then 25% from a given training plan you are tapering - now some might need to adjust by more than 25% to achieve best results - but Dev what you describe in terms of your reducing volume seems to fit in this catagory.
IMO - there is more to consider when developing a taper than what volume, amount, intensity of training the athlete put in during the conceptualized and structured training plan for the given event. For example - Dev from what I have read about you on ST (granted I don’t know you or really that much about you) you seem to have a very significant base developed over many years. I believe this type of ‘physiological capasity’ one that is accumulated over very long periods of time, plays a huge role in defining how your taper should or can be structured. My thought is that for someone like you, depending on how broken down you are from the given regieme you followed up to your taper race, you may not really need as much rest as some one with less ‘base’ - your body has adapted to the riggors of tarining in a way that allwos it to not only rebound more quickly (the converse being needing less taper - as this can be defined in a number of ways) and additionally you body may ‘break down’ (not in the traditional sense of loosing fitness quickly) and due to the lack of training stimuli loose effetiveness more quickly.
I have no idea about a three week taper - seems very long to me but of course woudl depend on how that taper is structured - I can’t see cutting huge amounts of volume that far out
OK - mostly these are just loose thought of a board mind
Tapering is definately personal. Back in the old swim days I used to watch some guys do nearly nothing for a month, and swim out of their heads. Others would train up until a couple days before. That was for very short races compared to triathlon, so I suppose the taper has to be adjusted according to what distance you are racing. Three weeks of tapering off for an Ironman seems reasonable. As for the TDF guys riding on the day off for a bit, that makes sense so as not to get stiff. You can’t compare the TDF 23 days of racing to a one day event where you go all out…What I have witnessed over the years is that most people go into races under rested, rather than over rested. If you are truly fit, it almost seems impossible to over rest…
