The myth of the taper
The Ironman triathlon season is upon us and that means lots of swim, bike and run training, checking in with your triathlon coach, watching your nutrition and, hopefully, staying injury free. As the race itself approaches you have to think about your taper. Taper? What’s all that about?
Mastering the taper for a long distance event is like the Holy Grail of triathlon, get it right and you’ll be flying, get it wrong.......and it’ll be a long, long day! I alluded to some of the mystery surrounding rest and recovery and losing fitness in a previous post, however this post is more about my thoughts on the mysteries of the taper.
The process of tapering, or reducing your training volume, in the run up to a big endurance event (in this case, an Ironman triathlon) is primarily used to peak for that event, to squeeze out every last drop of performance; essentially to get you to the start line fit and fresh. And this is the key for me: fit and fresh. But how long should you taper for? The traditional taper for an Ironman is 3-4 weeks, but for me, this is just far too long. There’s not going to be too much science behind this, just my thoughts and experiences; and the thoughts of some people whose opinion I value.
To fully appreciate the taper for a massive endurance event like the Ironman, we need to understand how the body reacts and adapts to a training load. Speed and strength takes quite a long time to appear in the body compared to endurance, and likewise speed and strength sticks around a lot longer (e.g. endurance drops off quicker than speed and strength). What has this got to do with tapering for the Ironman you may ask? Well, this is the main crux of my thought process regarding the mythical 3-4 week Ironman taper, it just doesn’t make sense! Research shows that we start to see a decline in endurance (not speed or strength) within 7 to 10 days, that’s why the endurance part of our training, for me, should be maintained until about 7 to 10 days out from race day.
The traditional 3-4 week Ironman taper is a myth for age group athletes. What you see from some age group triathletes is a rapid reduction in volume and intensity and they then “coast” towards their A race. We need to keep some momentum. The taper is often an excuse to do very little. Remember what I said above about getting to the start line fit and fresh? This is our goal, but what we often end up with is an athlete who gets to the start line unfit and fresh. In those final 3-4 weeks the athlete will have shed all their fatigue but also lost their hard earned fitness, and perhaps even gained weight through continued eating (the same amount of calories) whilst reducing their energy expenditure (I may explore the carbo-loading myth more in a later post).
Please bear in mind this is my thoughts on age group triathletes and not the elites. The elite triathlete may have a longer taper as their training load is far superior to age grouper athletes. Some coaches would suggest very little or even no taper for age groupers as they simply don’t train enough to warrant a taper.
So what should the final few training weeks look like? I’m not going to get into the percentage of reduction you should undertake, as this is so individual, but my general thoughts are something like this.
- 4 to 6 weeks from A race: your training focus should turn to endurance now (race specific)
- 10 to 14 days from A race: finish off your last endurance race pace efforts
- 7 to 10 days from A race: finish off your last long endurance sessions, these sessions keep the momentum going, keep some volume but not too much intensity, so keep it all fairly easy.
The final week is key. I would suggest several shorter sessions, perhaps 20 to 60 minute sessions in all three disciplines, at race pace or slightly slower. The aim here is to maintain fitness, shed the remaining fatigue whilst maintaining the neuromuscular pathways. These pathways are basically the brains memory system for your muscle fibres. It reminds your muscle fibres that they need to activate in certain patterns to perform the actions required for the 3 sports. If the brain is not stimulated it tends to drift after 48-72 hours, so we need to remind the brain what is required of it.
Should I take a day off in the final week? In an ideal world I would say maybe not, keep active, but due to travel and family commitments it may be forced upon you. For instance, if you travel a significant distance to get to your Ironman race it may make sense to take a day off on the travel day. Some athletes just don’t feel right after a rest day and it may take a day or two to get back into “the groove”, if this is the case with you, then make sure you don’t take a complete day off the day before your A race. But this is very much a personal thing.
If scheduling and location allows, the day before the Ironman I would try to do 10 minutes in each discipline, just to make sure everything feels right. It’s like a final test drive of the body and equipment before the big day. Once this is done, you’re ready to rock and roll, hopefully you end up at the start line fit and fresh!
If you are competing at Ironman Wales or any Ironman event in the UK and Europe and need some help with your triathlon training, whether it be a bespoke online training plan, a standalone training plan or a 1-2-1 coaching session, contact us today!