Last couple days before an Ironman

There are different approaches to the last couple days of a taper before a full Ironman event (in most cases, a 70.3 event requires a slightly different approach than a full Ironman).  You’ve probably read about some athletes putting in a fairly hardy dose of training on race week.  Even within the last couple days before the race.  This doesn’t work for everybody, but you always hear about the people that do it because it’s outside the norm (Belinda Granger -to name a name off the top of my head). Then they go and win Ironman events and you start thinking that that is what you should be doing too.  Not the case.  Keep in mind, the people doing this have been training incredibly hard for a long time (we all have – but relatively speaking not as hard as a full time athlete).  A 3 hour ride two days out from the race may seem like peanuts to them.  Unless you’re training full time and can test that type of situation I would steer away from it.  We’ve found that our best races always happened after we thought we had NOT done enough during race week.  Assuming the race was on Sunday, we started getting really antsy on Saturday or even Friday.  For most athletes starting an Ironman this is a good thing.  It means you’re rested, your body wants to go exert itself, you’re ready.  Even the feeling of being somewhat sleepy is not altogether a bad thing for an Ironman (you’re welcome to disagree).  It’s a long day and using the first 20 kms to shake out some sleepiness can lead to a very strong finish.

So, assuming your Ironman is on a Sunday:

Friday is your day to do nothing except organize.  Maybe a light walk or 20 minute spin to check your race wheels and gear.    Get everything ready so you don’t have to be the person running around picking up CO2’s and energy bars the day before the race.  Spend as much time as you can off your feet, and eat your biggest meals today.  Healthy food, not calorie laden junk…unless healthy food makes you sick because you’re used to eating calorie laden junk.  That’s another tip for later.

Saturday: Get everything done early.  Take your bike to transition, do a couple VERY light workouts. Most recommend doing a little bit of everything with accelerations to get the blood flowing.  Working up a light sweat is great, but doing some 2 minute max effort repeats that you’ve rarely done in training is not going to help.   Think ‘Ironman race pace’ for a couple minutes in each sport.  Not ‘Ironman Perceived Exersion’, make it Ironman race pace – ie. Easy when you’re rested.  Don’t stress  yourself out, that’s the biggest thing. If you’re panicking running around trying to co-ordinate how you’re going to swim for 10minutes, bike for 20, then run a bit, just go find a couch and visualize your race.  You’ll be better off.