Any advice on what to do this week? I’ve heard that for a full IM you really need to take the entire taper week off and just conserve energy. Not sure what is best for half IM.
I had to pack a lot of long workouts into the last few weeks just because that’s how my schedule worked out so I’m feeling a little beat up but I’m concerned about being totally flat on Saturday if I do nothing this week.
I’ve been following Gale Bernhardt’s 1/2 IM training plan. The “race week” plan calls for a few short, high-effort workouts to keep the legs fresh and to keep that feeling of speed. However, the two taper weeks preceding the race week were all low effort, reduced volume weeks to recover. If you’ve been packing on the miles in the last two weeks you haven’t recovered at all, so I definitely wouldn’t do any more high effort workouts. You’re better off doing some light recovery workouts or taking a day or two off. If you’re feeling great and totally bored, you could do a really short brick on Friday, just to get some spring in the legs, but nothing long or hard enough to generate fatigue. As an example, Gale’s plan calls for a brick on Friday with a 30 min swim, 20 min bike, and 10 min run at race pace. In short, if you don’t give your body enough time to recover you’re not going to realize any of the benefits of all the hard work you’ve put in.
I’m not doing long course, but to those in our club who are, the coach wants them to do short, light workouts of maybe 30-40 minutes or so until Thursday. Throw in a few 1 minute harder efforts to sharpen up the muscles, but make sure there are several minutes of easy recovery between each effort. Since the race is on Saturday, he wants them to take both Thursday and Friday completely off, with only some stretching. He told them to eat more protein in the first half of the week, and more carbs in the second half. Good luck! I’ll be rooting for you through the campground!