Hey what's up, triathletes.
Taren here.
If you've got a big race coming up, that means that it is time to taper.
Stick around because we're going to give you a one to three week plan for how to nail your
taper.
Get ready for your next race.
If you have an important race coming up in the next few weeks, that means that it is
taper time.
Kick back and relax because the next ten to twenty-one days are not meant to kill yourself
any more.
It's time to soak up all that training, and get a little bit faster.
This is the time to let your body recover and start firing on all cylinders.
At this point, your training is done, so resist the urge to get in that last workout or extra
interval.
The work is already done at this point, so all that extra effort is do nothing but tire
you out, potentially ruin your race.
As we know, after just a couple of days we start feeling better.
Fatigue is so much deeper than just a couple of days.
Depending on your age, the distance of your race, the important of your race, your taper
should last anywhere from ten to twenty-one days; not just a few.
If your race is more important, if your race is longer, like a half ironman, or an ironman.
If you're older, it should probably start edging toward that twenty-one day mark.
For shorter races, like sprints, Olympics, young athletes who recover really quick, or
if it's not that important a race, it can be closer to that ten day mark.
Regardless, of the length of the taper, whether it's ten or twenty-one days, this plan should
give you a really good starting point to get you set up for that taper.
Now, you're going to start off your taper with one to three days almost entirely off.
The purpose of this, is to flush out a lot of that accumulative fatigue.
You can either take those days completely off, or you can limit yourself to no more
than sixty minutes, and nothing faster than a zone two effort.
This is barely just jogging pace for a little bit of time.
If you take those entire three days off, like I currently am at the moment, your body's
going to be pretty happy.
After those one to three days off, or at super low volumes, and up to about three to four
days from the race, you start sharpening.
This means performing some sessions that are very specific to your race.
You could be practicing your swim start, your transition one, your transition two, sitting,
but in general, you really want to bring down your volume to probably about half the volume
you were doing before the taper started.
With that said, what you do include is some short, quick efforts, to keep your body in
the habit of turning over the legs, turning over the arms, and getting that speed up quite
a bit.
The trick is to stop yourself in every one of these workouts before you dig yourself
a hole.
Do the workout until you feel good.
Do a proper warm down.
You don't ever want to finish one of these taper workouts feeling cooked, or really even
taxed.
At about three to four days out from the race, that period of the taper should end.
This is where you start managing the logistical issues of the race.
Start dialing in your travel, getting your nutrition in order, getting your bike one
last cleaning, because a clean bike is a fast bike.
Checking your tires and tubes for quality, making sure there's no punctures, and maybe
replacing them, so you got a brand new set of rubber under the wheels there.
When you finally get to the location of the triathlon, absolute perfect timing for this
is to arrive at the location of the triathlon two days out from the race, and using that
as a full recovery day, doing no workouts.
Drive the bike course, and bike the run course.
After that two days out, where you're doing essentially nothing, and getting yourself
nice and fresh.
The day before, you want to do a small workout of twenty, twenty, twenty, to get your body
ready to move again.
Do a short twenty minute swim, a short twenty minute bike, and a short twenty minute run.
With each of them, do some very slight ten to twenty second efforts getting yourself
up to race pace and moving your heart rate up a little bit.
Make sure in the swim, you do some sitting to see if there are some site lines, like
trees, or bright objects that you can look at as you're in the swim.
Know where the buoys are, know where the entrance is, know where the exit is, and where you're
turning towards transition.
The walk through transition so you can figure out a good place to put your bike.
A little pro tip for you, is to move your bike as close to the bike exit as possible,
so that your run through transition isn't carrying a bike with you.
Map out the entrance, the exit, where your bike is in all the racks, so you know exactly
where to go throughout the day.
Do a quick practice of transition one, and transition two, just to go through that routine
and remind your brain of the steps that you take.
If you're doing a longer race, where you might have some special needs throughout the race,
map out where the best porta potty is.
Then, finally figure out where the water and nutrition stations are, and if all things
go to hell, where you can find shelter if you need to take it, and get off the course.
The night before your race all you should be doing is packing your transition bag, and
going through a checklist that you created a few days before, when you weren't stressed
out, or worrying about the next morning.
Make sure that everything on that checklist is in the bag.
Pack it nicely, so that you don't have to worry about that the next morning.
If you have your breakfast figured out for the next morning, get that ready, too, to
save yourself some time the morning of the triathlon.
At this point, you should be fully tapered and ready to kill that triathlon.
You shouldn't have to worry about anything besides getting a good sleep, getting enough
nutrition in the morning, and showing up ready to go.
As far as triathlon nutrition goes, I've got another video that I'll link to over at the
side here, that gives you a full twenty-four hour triathlon nutrition plan, to get you
started.
As always, happy and hard training.
Good luck in your next triathlon.