What are people’s preferences around this…I’m just curious because I’ve tried it both ways and personally I tend to race better if I do short 15-20 minutes each sport (with 4-5 x 30 secs race efforts) two days before the race and take the day before completely off…I’ve tried doing the latter the day before and resting two days prior but found I don’t race as well. What do most of you do? This is for Oly dist and Half Iron…
Always do something the day before… short swim, short ride, short run.
I tend to do a light 3 mile run, or an easy 10 miles on the bike the day before just to get the blood flowing.
i’ll do an hour on the bike, with 2 or 3 hard intervals, with a light 15-20 jog off the bike.
your mileage can and will vary.
Yup, I’ve tried both ways as well and I think I’m better with complete rest the day before. I thinks this is very hightly variable with athletes though and depends upon how rough you are on yourself during training or taper (if you taper). The old addage that it is better to be undertrained than overtrained rules…
I find that most athletes do better with very light swim and bike the day before with some very short pickups and a very light swim and run 2 days before. Keep volume and intensity very light, but include a couple of 1-2 minute pickups at race pace and some 15-20 second very fast efforts. I have an article on tapering that Joe Friel and I wrote for inside Triathlon several years ago that I’d be happy to send to anyone who emails me at CoachKen@erols.com Ken
If I ranked all my best races and training workouts (from a wattage perspective), I’d say most of my best results came the day after a complete off day.
My best efforts come with a day off two days before, a light workout (3 miles easy run) the day before, and a 10 minute warm-up 30 ending 30 minutes before race start.
Not that I’m fast, but that works best for me.
Thanks for the replies…Eric that’s exactly what I did… I went through my training logs for the last 3 years and looked at what I did the day before and 2 days out prior to races. My best races were when I took the day before completely off. I get that everyone is different and may respond differently but this is what seems to work for me…The other nice thing about it is that it reduces stress the day before…You can go to the expo; don’t need to rush around figuring out how to get your workout in.
some of my best oly and sprint races are the day after an EZ 3-4 hour ride.