My tri season is pretty much in the crapper. Between no money, deciding to find a new career and the fact that i don’t train well without a specific goal, its not going to happen. I will probably pull off a late season du.
So I need a goal, I like Ultras, but I barely have enough time to get up to distance for this one. So my question is, is 2 weeks too short of a taper for big distance race? I am wavering between training for the 50k or 50 miler. I have a bit to decide as at this point I am still just racking miles up.
Usually the taper for an ultra just involves recovering from the damage done in the training. Depending on how bad the damage is, that can take a week, ten days- maybe a little more.
The key thing is, you don’t want to lose endurance and joint acclimation. Joint acclimation is the soft tissue’s ability to support the work load for hours on end. I think that adaptation lasts a few weeks. The other concern is keeping your feet tough. If the skin on your feet goes soft from showering and taking it easy, you may have foot problems in the race. It’s important to maintain the toughness of the skin on your feet during your rest phase. That can be done by folowing the “foot toughening routine” in the book “Fixing Your Feet”.
I usually recover fairly quickly as long as I keep up some light training. If I stop altgether recovery takes much longer.
I had not considered joint acclimation. I always thought in terms of muscles and connective tissue. Didn’t seem to bother me during my last ultra, did have some joint problems before relating to jumping my mileage too quickly.
My feet don’t tend to be a problem. The get a little dry, easy to control. I think this is due to the amount of time I spend barefoot teaching classes. Also the amount of toughness of the epidermis that comes from this.
Thanks for the input, The race is “Dances with Dirt” put on by Running Fit.
I did the 50k last year on not a lot of training and I pulled through OK and felt fine the next day. My feeling is if you can handle a 2.5 to 3 hr run on the pavement (3 hours was my longest run that summer), you should be able to handle the 50k on a trail. As long as you pace yourself. I also didn’t taper that much as my training had also gone to hell that summer.
It helps also not to think of it in terms of 50k. That makes it sound kinda intimidating. It helped me to think of it as a marathon plus a few miles. If that doesn’t help, you also get a free pizza (14 inch) at the end of the race. How’s that for an incentive?
The 50 miler is another story. Those guys are freaks.
My tri season is pretty much in the crapper. Between no money, deciding to find a new career and the fact that i don’t train well without a specific goal, its not going to happen. I will probably pull off a late season du.
So I need a goal, I like Ultras, but I barely have enough time to get up to distance for this one. So my question is, is 2 weeks too short of a taper for big distance race? I am wavering between training for the 50k or 50 miler. I have a bit to decide as at this point I am still just racking miles up.
In my opinion it is almost unnecessary to taper for an ultra. At least at my level as I was never racing them and they are so long any additional stored glycogen, etc. is of almost no use for a race of that distance. So, why bother. Just do it and have fun. I always enjoyed ultras more than mere marathons because I approached them “less seriously”.
The training between the 50k and 50m should be about the same. If you can do one you can do the other. The difference between the two is how you will run it.
