# The IRONMAN Race Simulation: Nailing Your Last Big Weekend of Training | Ep 505

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 4 Sep 2024, 26 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/91237811/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-8-3%2F385755961-44100-2-9f23262f5fbeb.mp3

In this episode, Team Oxygenaddict's Coach Rob shares the main goals and focus of the last few weeks of training before your Ironman. He focuses on the last big weekend of training - the "Race Sim Weekend", two weeks before race day, and explains effective tapering techniques to ensure you are both fit and fresh. Learn how to simulate race day conditions in your training, avoid common mistakes, and get detailed advice on planning your workouts, nutrition, and gear. This episode is especially useful for athletes preparing for Ironman Wales, but the tips are broadly applicable to all Ironman participants. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming 12 months here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply use this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:09] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:12] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform at your best with
[0:16] 15% off your first order of electrolytes and carbohydrate
[0:19] fuel with the code OXYGEN 24 at precisionfuelandhydration.com.
[0:24] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host, coach Rob Willby,
[0:28] and every week we bring you an episode of this podcast to help
[0:31] motivate and inspire you. Couple of things we can do for
[0:34] us please, as we start today. If you like this episode, please
[0:38] consider following us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and please
[0:42] think about liking and subscribing if you're watching
[0:44] on YouTube. Both of those things really help
[0:46] the growth of the show and help us get shown to more athletes.
[0:49] Secondly, if you're looking for help and advice with your
[0:52] triathlon training, please get in touch.
[0:55] You can e-mail us at help@oxygenaddict.com or there's
[0:58] a link in show notes. Big news this week is Team
[1:02] Oxygen Addict is open again for new members, so we've had a
[1:07] waiting list in place all through the summer.
[1:09] We're now at the point where we're taking our next intake in.
[1:12] We like to take athletes in through September and October,
[1:15] then we're ready to go and have a really strong winter build.
[1:18] Get athletes all the way through two big FTP preparation blocks
[1:22] during the winter time when everybody else is sitting on the
[1:24] backside, and then you're really ready to hit the ground running
[1:28] come next spring when everyone else is ready to think about
[1:31] training again. So if you've been considering
[1:34] getting triathlon coaching or you're considering changing
[1:36] triathlon coaches, we'd love to have a conversation with you.
[1:39] There's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[1:42] us and we'll have a chat with you and see if we can how we can
[1:46] best help you out and whether you'd be a good fit for joining
[1:49] our triathlon team. On this episode of the podcast,
[1:53] I'm going to be talking about the way you can best peek
[1:57] yourself ready for an Ironman. So we're going to be talking
[1:59] about the last big weekend of training two weeks out before
[2:03] your Ironman race week and how we can effectively taper and get
[2:07] you really fresh ready for race day.
[2:09] But the big focus of this is going to be talking about how
[2:13] you can best use the last remaining time you've got before
[2:16] your Iron Man. So firstly you can bring
[2:18] yourself into peak condition and secondly that you don't try and
[2:22] do too much in the last couple of weeks and then you end up at
[2:26] race day really fit but also really fresh and feeling really
[2:30] ready to go. So as I'm recording this
[2:32] episode, it's time to go out two weeks before Iron Man Wales.
[2:37] We've had a huge number of athletes join Team Oxygen Addict
[2:40] this year through our collaboration with the Iron Man
[2:42] Wales team. We've got tonnes of athletes
[2:45] racing. I think we've got about 45
[2:46] athletes racing Iron Man Wales. And so partly this podcast is
[2:50] for them. It's to talk you through your
[2:53] race simulation weekend, what to expect, what to do, all the
[2:56] little tricks we've got around that.
[2:58] But also to then talk about the importance of the taper and the
[3:02] importance of not trying to do too much too close up to the
[3:05] race. Some of the mistakes we've seen
[3:07] athletes make in the past that we want to help you avoid doing.
[3:12] So first up, the big picture here, we want you to arrive at
[3:15] race day really fit and ready to go, but also not tired at all,
[3:22] so you feel really fresh and in the best position to use the
[3:25] fitness that you've built. And unfortunately, those two
[3:28] things don't always coincide together.
[3:31] You can obviously keep training all the way up to race day.
[3:34] You can do big, big sessions all the way into race week in the
[3:37] hope that you're going to keep getting fitter.
[3:40] But it's been our experience that any big sessions any closer
[3:44] than sort of 14 days before race day, they do make you fitter,
[3:48] but you don't have the time to recover from them and shed the
[3:51] fatigue from them in time for race weekend.
[3:55] And so that's why we, we give the advice of doing the last big
[3:58] weekend of training 2 weekends before race day.
[4:01] In the past, we've had athletes who've tried to do one last big
[4:04] weekend workout or even one last big bike workout a week before
[4:08] race day. And I think it, it, it does go
[4:11] away to sort of making you feel better in your mind that you're
[4:15] fit enough to go for race day. And it is a big challenge after
[4:18] all, but you don't have the time to recover and shed the fatigue.
[4:22] So what we found for working age group is that two week periods
[4:26] of tapering down, not that you're going to do nothing.
[4:29] And the tapers, you know, it's simple but not easy.
[4:33] I think the phrase is you're not going to do nothing during those
[4:35] two weeks, but we're not going to do anything really long
[4:38] because we want to make sure that you're fresh and ready to
[4:42] feel just fantastic as well as feeling really fit.
[4:45] And there's a big difference there.
[4:46] If you're really fit but you're still really tired, you'll feel
[4:49] really flat on race day. Yes, you'll get round, but it
[4:53] won't be a great performance and you won't feel good.
[4:55] So the first thing we're going to talk about then is the race
[4:58] simulation weekend. We spread this out over either
[5:03] two or three days, usually Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday
[5:07] morning, or sometimes we have it all day Saturday and into Sunday
[5:12] morning. And I'll explain more.
[5:14] We're going to look at doing the vast majority of an Iron Man
[5:17] distance over a weekend, broken up into chunks.
[5:21] We're going to do the swim all in one go.
[5:23] We're then going to do a big bike ride followed by a 45
[5:27] minute run, and then we're going to do a 2 hour run on the Sunday
[5:30] morning. So we schedule this so that the
[5:33] athlete swims on the Friday, again ideally on the Friday
[5:37] night because we're trying to compress this into the time to
[5:40] try and make it as much like a broken Iron Man as possible.
[5:45] If you don't have the chance to do that, if you're on the
[5:47] options to swim Friday morning, that's totally fine to do the
[5:50] big swim Friday morning, the Big Brick Saturday, the big run
[5:54] Sunday. It's also absolutely fine if
[5:57] you're on the option for open water swimming is a Saturday
[6:00] morning that can work perfectly as well.
[6:02] You can be really organised, get up really early, do the swim in
[6:05] open water first thing Saturday, do the big bike run on the
[6:10] Saturday and then do you run on the Sunday as well.
[6:13] So we're not precious about the exact timing of all of this, but
[6:16] the idea is we're compressing most of an Iron Man into about a
[6:21] 36 hour window. And so, you know, the Friday
[6:24] night through to early Sunday morning ends up being about 36
[6:27] hours or perhaps even better, especially for a really fit
[6:31] athlete. If you can do the swim or you
[6:33] want to do the swim the Saturday morning before you do the ride,
[6:37] that can work really well. Especially for athletes who are
[6:40] on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th Iron Man and they're really looking for a
[6:44] performance. I don't think you have to do it
[6:46] that way, especially not for first timers.
[6:48] It's fine to spread it out over the three days, but for our
[6:51] athletes who are looking for the really peak performance, I'm
[6:54] really happy for them to do that swim on the Saturday morning.
[6:58] So let's talk about what the weekend looks like.
[7:00] First up, everything that we do during the race and weekend is
[7:04] designed to simulate your race day.
[7:06] No surprises. So we want it to be as similar
[7:09] to race day as it's going to be on race day.
[7:12] So we want the equipment to be as similar as possible.
[7:16] We want the terrain to be as similar as possible.
[7:18] We want the conditions, the weather ideally to be as similar
[7:21] as possible. And obviously we can't control
[7:23] weather, but we can control the courses that we use, whether we
[7:27] swim in a pool, in open water, in salt water.
[7:31] Try and make it as much like your goal race as possible with
[7:35] some planning. If you're doing a, if you're
[7:37] doing a hilly race like Ironman Wales and the run is fairly
[7:40] predictable in the length of the hills, if you go and have a look
[7:43] on the course map, if you can find a run that's like that or a
[7:47] bike that's got similar hills for your bike workout, even
[7:51] better. If you can't, don't worry about
[7:53] it. If you live in a really flat
[7:55] part of the country and you have to do your ride on the flat,
[7:58] that's totally fine, but the more that you can make it like
[8:01] race day, the better. So we're going to kick off
[8:04] either the Friday, the morning, the evening or even Saturday
[8:06] morning with a big swim. We're going to swim 3.8 to 4
[8:10] kilometres, ideally in open water, ideally in the same sort
[8:15] of water that you're going to be racing in.
[8:17] So saltwater, if you're going to be swimming at saltwater, I'm on
[8:21] Wales for an example, with wet suit that you're going to wear
[8:24] on the day, with a swim hat you're going to wear on the day,
[8:27] wear the same goggles, wear the Tri suit underneath it.
[8:30] You're trying to make everything as similar as possible.
[8:33] Now all of our athletes listening, the vast majority at
[8:37] least will already have done one race simulation weekend already.
[8:40] In some cases that won't have happened because of illness and
[8:43] injury, but we've certainly scheduled them.
[8:45] I know a lot of our listeners or YouTube viewers perhaps won't
[8:48] have had the opportunity to do a racing weekend already.
[8:51] So it's really important to think about this in advance and
[8:53] plan it out. Plan that you're going to wear
[8:56] the same clothes that you're going to wear on race day.
[8:59] You're usually going to get given a relatively cheap swim
[9:02] cap, for example, from the Iron Man.
[9:03] It's usually not a really nice one.
[9:05] So wear the same kind of swim cap that you're going to get off
[9:08] the Iron Man people, one of the cheap ones rather than one of
[9:11] the nicer swim caps, for example.
[9:13] And then you know what it's going to be like if you've got
[9:16] the chance and you think you're going to have to wear 2 swim
[9:18] caps on race day because of the temperature, do this and you
[9:21] race them. You want as many things as
[9:23] possible to be the same and you race them so that nothing is a
[9:27] surprise on race day. And think about for the swim,
[9:30] think about having Body Glide or some kind of Lube around the
[9:33] neck and the cuffs of your suit so that you don't end up getting
[9:37] chafe around the neck and around the cuffs and in the armpits,
[9:40] things like that. You really want to be thinking
[9:43] about this stuff for the race SIM and ideally not making any
[9:46] mistakes. But if there are mistakes being
[9:48] made, this is the safest environment to make them in.
[9:51] OK, so for the swim, we want the same suit, the same hat, the
[9:55] same goggles, ideally the same water that you're going to be
[9:58] swimming in. And you're going to go and do a
[10:00] 3.8 K swim. You're going to get into the
[10:03] water without a warm up because you're not going to get one on
[10:05] race day. Go straight into the water and
[10:08] use the first part of the swim as a warm up.
[10:10] And again, the theme here is make things as similar as
[10:13] possible that you're going to experience come race day.
[10:17] OK, so there's just when I'm done either Friday morning
[10:21] before work, Friday evening after work, Saturday morning
[10:24] before your big brick Day 2. This is the meat and potatoes
[10:29] for your racing week out. It's it's going to be a really
[10:32] big ride. We're going to be riding for 180
[10:34] K on the bike and then we're going to run 45 minutes off the
[10:38] bike as soon as possible after finishing the bike.
[10:41] So again, you're going to need to be organised, have your
[10:43] running kit ready to go. And for cycling, we're going to
[10:47] have as much as possible of the same kit on that you're going to
[10:52] use on race day. So if you're riding in a Tri
[10:54] suit, wear that. If you're wearing shorts and a
[10:57] cycling top, wear that. The key is to try and make it as
[11:00] replicable as possible so that on race day, nothing feels weird
[11:04] and nothing feels different. Same helmet, same sunglasses,
[11:09] same gloves if you wear them, same shoes, race bike, race
[11:13] wheels, race tyres. It's a really good opportunity
[11:16] to get everything sorted ahead of this weekend and try
[11:19] everything out now. So then you've got nothing else
[11:22] that you need to change. I would advise you if you're
[11:25] going to do things like get the chain changed on your bike or
[11:28] even get the cassette changed on your bike, getting this done
[11:31] ahead of the racing weekend means that it's definitely going
[11:34] to be better than in time and you know there's no problems
[11:36] with it in time for your actual race day.
[11:40] I'd prefer it if athletes had the new chain and cassette and
[11:43] whatever else sorted well before racing weekend, but two weeks is
[11:48] still plenty of time to get that sorted.
[11:50] If you know that you need to get that sorted, then take care of
[11:52] it. Now.
[11:53] Again, the key thing is you want as many things to be as similar
[11:57] in the racing weekend so that you know how that's going to be
[12:00] on race day. So 180 K in race kit on your
[12:05] race bike with your race wheels in the race position.
[12:09] You've trained up for this. At this point, you're more than
[12:11] capable of doing those distances and durations in that kit.
[12:15] And don't be surprised if you find yourself going much faster
[12:18] in the race SIM than you have in training because it's the
[12:20] cumulative effect of the skin suit, the arrow helmet, the you
[12:25] know, the race tyres, the the proper in the tubes or the
[12:28] tubeless that you're using the race wheels.
[12:30] Being in the position and focused for that time, this is
[12:33] your attempt to try and make it as much like race day as
[12:36] possible. Now this is going to extend over
[12:39] into your fuelling on the bike and your refuelling on the bike.
[12:43] So have your plan ready. Our athletes will have the race
[12:46] day planner already filled out. If you're not a coached athlete
[12:49] by us, at the bare minimum you need to know the amount of fluid
[12:53] per hour you need to take, the concentration of electrolytes
[12:56] that goes in there, and the number of grammes of carbs per
[12:59] hour that you're going to need to take.
[13:01] And you need to come up with a plan for a way to carry that
[13:03] stuff so that you can be self-sufficient.
[13:06] Now, it might be for the racing. You have to plan to stop along
[13:09] the way at service stations or at little shops, Totally fine.
[13:13] It might be that you have to do loops on the bike.
[13:15] Again, totally fine if you need to come back and refuel and
[13:18] refill your water, but have the plan in place ahead of time of
[13:21] where you're going to stop so you don't have to think about
[13:24] this while you're out there or worse, not have any options
[13:27] available to you while you're out there.
[13:30] So it's a really good time ahead of the racing to think about,
[13:33] right? Going to need to be carrying, I
[13:36] don't know, I'm going to say 1800 calories as a rough finger
[13:39] in the air. How am I going to do that?
[13:41] Is it going to be a mix of solids, gels, drink mixes?
[13:45] Where am I going to carry the solids and gels if I'm wearing a
[13:47] skin suit? Am I going to need a little
[13:49] Bento box on my top tube? Am I going to need something
[13:52] between my Tri bars? You've got time ahead of the
[13:55] racing weekend to work this stuff out.
[13:57] Don't leave it until race SIM day to be struggling to carry
[14:01] this stuff around with you. And again, everything you have
[14:05] to wear to carry stuff over the top of the skin suit is costing
[14:09] you time and speed over just wearing a skin suit.
[14:13] So you've got to have a very good reason to have extra
[14:15] clothing on. If you can find a way to carry
[14:18] the food, for example, in a little Bento box on the top
[14:21] tube, no aerodynamic penalty to that whatsoever compared to
[14:26] thinking, well, I'll just stick a cycling jersey over the top
[14:29] and you know, fill the back pockets full of food, probably
[14:32] going to cost you a kilometre an hour in terms of aerodynamic
[14:35] gains. It's as much as that.
[14:37] So plan it ahead of time, especially if you're an athlete
[14:40] who is performance focused and especially if you're an athlete
[14:44] who is pushing up against the cut offs and for for every 10
[14:48] minutes is really going to make a difference here.
[14:50] Being as aerodynamic as possible is really going to help you.
[14:54] OK, SO180K ride done at the race intensity.
[15:00] So my advice here is go to bestbikesplit.com.
[15:05] You can search the various courses that are in there.
[15:07] You can pull out the course for your race.
[15:08] So in the case of Iron Man Wales, pull out the Iron Man
[15:10] Wales course, have it analyse one of your previous training
[15:14] rides and it will give you power guidance numbers as to what you
[15:17] need to ride to. You can even download the actual
[15:20] power navigation file for your Garmin.
[15:22] It's as good as cheating. It will do away with so much of
[15:26] the problems of people going far too hard early on or going far
[15:29] too hard up the hills. Just having their little power
[15:32] CHEAT SHEET printed out will go a long way to giving you the
[15:36] right guidance relative to your own FTP level and fitness and
[15:40] aerodynamics and stuff. There's loads of free stuff
[15:43] available at best bikesplit.com. We're not affiliated with them,
[15:45] but we think it's a fantastic package.
[15:47] So go and make use of it and it will pretty accurately predict
[15:51] how long the bike is going to take you at your fitness with
[15:55] your body weight on your equipment.
[15:57] And really that's, that's a really good lead.
[15:59] Then you can then take to think, well, I know the bike is going
[16:03] to take me roughly 6 1/2 hours. Say for example, it's really
[16:08] common I'm on whales for the bike to take a lot longer than
[16:10] people are expecting. It's not a fast course.
[16:12] It's a very slow course in fact. And so I'd rather you know ahead
[16:16] of time that it's going to take you perhaps half an hour or an
[16:20] hour more than you perhaps think it's going to.
[16:22] So you can prepare for that mentally ahead of time.
[16:26] OK, so there's 180 K ride and then we're going to follow this
[16:30] up with a 45 minute run off the bike.
[16:33] I advise all these runs are done as 9 minutes run, one minute
[16:36] walk where some kind of GPS on your on your wrist with some
[16:41] kind of heart rate monitor. And then when you get back, you
[16:43] can compare the pace that you ran and you can compare the
[16:47] heart rate that you're at relative to a standard run that
[16:52] you would do and see how much drift and there is in the heart
[16:56] rate or not. If your heart rate is
[16:58] considerably higher than after a standard stand alone run, it's
[17:02] likely you're going to have to dial the power down a little bit
[17:05] for race day. OK now then.
[17:09] Pace for the run is pretty much the best case scenario for
[17:14] almost all athletes is going to be E Pace is going to be the
[17:17] Jack Daniels pace predictor, which you can Google if you're
[17:19] not one of our athletes. That's a really good best case
[17:23] scenario for most people's Iron Man marathon.
[17:26] It doesn't look fast on paper, It never does.
[17:29] Almost every athlete thinks I'm going to be able to run much
[17:31] faster than that. I have very rarely seen any
[17:34] athlete run faster than their E pace.
[17:37] Certainly an age group level. Lots of people think they can.
[17:42] Lots of people perhaps do that for the 1st 10 or 15 kilometres,
[17:46] but that's not what I'm talking about.
[17:48] Talking about whether you can maintain that pace for the
[17:50] entire marathon. And your fastest marathon is
[17:53] going to come about by running at an even pace across the
[17:55] hallway, not by going out too hard and fading horribly.
[17:59] So we're going to prepare for this in training.
[18:01] We're going to do 45 minutes off the bike as 9/1 at E pace.
[18:05] We're going to check our heart rate and if everything's gone to
[18:08] plan, if your power's been correct on the bike, your heart
[18:11] rate is going to be where you expect it to be and everything's
[18:14] fantastic. So you've now done 180 K ride,
[18:17] you've done a 45 minute run off the bike.
[18:20] You're then going to go and refuel.
[18:21] You're going to go to bed early, you're going to try and relax
[18:24] because when you just get up first thing Sunday morning and
[18:26] go out for a 2 hour run and then you'll have run 2 hours, 45
[18:30] across the weekend off the back of a hard 180 K ride.
[18:34] That's going to set you up really well for peak fitness.
[18:37] Again, the Sunday morning run needs to be at E pace, no faster
[18:40] than that done as a nine one run walk.
[18:43] And again, compare your heart rate to what it would usually be
[18:48] on a standard run. Let's see if there are any
[18:50] variations. And again, having that heart
[18:53] rate much higher than you would expect it to be is a sign that
[18:56] you've perhaps gone a little bit too hard on the bike the day
[18:58] before. So lots to think about there.
[19:02] Key thing on that Sunday run is you need to fuel the same way
[19:07] that you'll need to fuel during the marathon on race day.
[19:11] So it's really typical for an athlete who's well trained to be
[19:14] able to do a 2 hour run without needing any carbohydrates and
[19:18] without really needing much in the way of fluid as well.
[19:22] You can get through it like that, but that is not the way to
[19:25] prepare for an Iron Man marathon.
[19:27] You're starting an Iron Man marathon already fuel depleted,
[19:30] probably a little bit dehydrated.
[19:32] So you need to practise in training the fuelling and the
[19:35] hydration strategies that you'll use on race day, which means
[19:38] you're going to need, you know, roughly 750 millilitres of fluid
[19:43] per hour minimum with the right electrolyte balance in minimum
[19:48] and somewhere in the region of 60 to 90 grammes of carbohydrate
[19:53] per hour as well. Even if you're already well
[19:58] refuelled from the day before. The key here is you're
[20:00] practising doing it. So you need a way to carry that
[20:03] fluid and fuel. Might be a good idea to do you
[20:06] run as a series of laps so you can pick up bottles and you can
[20:09] pick up gels strapped to the bottle along the way.
[20:12] Whatever your particular fuelling strategy is going to
[20:14] be, that's the thing to think about.
[20:17] You need to practise that as part of your run in the morning.
[20:21] Now you don't necessarily have to get up really early and have
[20:24] a massive breakfast before it. It's good practise to go out and
[20:27] do this with the fluid and the carbs that you'll have on race
[20:30] day. Have a light breakfast an hour
[20:31] before perhaps, but you don't need to overly stress a massive
[20:35] carbohydrated breakfast because a part of the run is practising
[20:39] the feeding, the fuelling and the electrolytes that you'll
[20:42] need come race day. Now at the end of that racing
[20:45] weekend, you're going to feel pretty tired.
[20:48] You're going to be pretty well done, even though you're really
[20:50] fit. Probably that'll be the
[20:52] culmination of the training that you've done and it might be the
[20:55] hardest weekend of training you've ever done, so get through
[20:58] it. It's OK to be really tired at
[21:01] the end of it. Get yourself away and recover as
[21:04] best you possibly can after that.
[21:06] So typically you're going to be tired, so plan to not do much
[21:10] that day if you possibly can. It's not a great day to have
[21:13] promised that you'll mow the lawn or you know, go out for a
[21:16] 10 mile hike with the family. You're going to need to be
[21:18] physically resting for the rest of that day.
[21:20] And from that point on, we're into the taper in the lead up to
[21:25] your race day. So we're going to have two
[21:28] complete rest days after this big weekend.
[21:31] Reasonable that you're going to feel very tired and you're going
[21:34] to need more sleep after them. But the big thing to expect
[21:37] during the taper is it's really common to not feel good and in
[21:43] fact to feel pretty unpleasant from the Wednesday through to
[21:47] the following Wednesday. To feel really flat, to feel
[21:50] really tired. That's totally normal.
[21:54] It's all part of your body shedding that fatigue and
[21:56] feeling really weird around the fact that you're mostly going to
[22:00] be doing 30 minutes or maximum 45 minute workouts daily during
[22:04] that taper period. Your body's used to doing much
[22:07] more than that and it kind of won't know what's going on.
[22:10] So you need to mentally be really strong and tell yourself,
[22:15] I know that this is happening. I know that I feel weird.
[22:18] Coach Rob has said I'm going to feel really strange during the
[22:20] taper, but it is going to work. Your body is going to shed that
[22:24] fatigue and come the Wednesday or Thursday of race week, you're
[22:28] going to start to feel great. And by Thursday or Friday of
[22:31] race week you're going to feel fantastic.
[22:34] And the short run that you do on the day before race day, you're
[22:37] going to feel absolutely brilliant with really fresh,
[22:41] bouncy, springy legs. But that won't happen if you are
[22:46] tricked by your mind into doing more training during that 10
[22:49] days worth of taper than I've just described.
[22:52] If you get tricked into doing a 3 or 4 hour ride at the weekend
[22:57] or the magic's gone, you're not going to freshen up in time for
[22:59] it unfortunately. So trust the taper will do its
[23:03] job. Know that it's normal to feel
[23:06] pretty average at best during the taper period, OK, Loads of
[23:10] things you can do mentally to to stay on top of stuff while
[23:13] you're in the taper period, getting your bags prepped and
[23:16] getting your race plan prepped and all of that kind of stuff.
[23:18] But physically training isn't the thing to be doing.
[23:22] OK, that's bringing us to the end of this episode then.
[23:25] That's that's covered how we go about physically doing the
[23:27] sessions in the racing weekend. The purpose of the racing
[23:31] weekend, everything being as much like race day as possible
[23:37] down to fuelling electrolytes, hydration, carbohydrate, the
[23:41] clothes that you wear, the kit that you're using, make as much
[23:44] of that as possible like your race day is going to be and
[23:48] you're going to find yourself in a fantastic shape really peaks.
[23:52] Your body is going to be at the peak of its training, peak of
[23:55] its fitness and then you shed all of that fatigue and the form
[23:59] is going to come through and you're going to feel fantastic
[24:01] for race day. If you are racing Ironman Wales,
[24:04] I wish you all the best of luck in the world.
[24:06] There'd be a tonne of team oxygenetics athletes down there
[24:08] in the kit, so give each other the thumbs up and the shouts as
[24:11] you go by. And you've trained a long time
[24:14] for this race. I hope it goes really well for
[24:16] you, you deserve it and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that
[24:20] you have good luck on race day. And that brings us to the end of
[24:24] this week's show. Here are some discount codes and
[24:26] deals for you at precisionfuelandhydration.com.
[24:30] You can use the code Oxygen 24 for 15% off your first
[24:33] electrolyte order. You can use their free fuel and
[24:36] hydration planning tool to receive a personalised strategy
[24:38] for your next race. The planner will help you
[24:41] understand your own carbohydrate, electrolytes and
[24:43] fluid needs so you can refine your strategy during training.
[24:46] And don't forget you can also book a free 1 to one video
[24:49] consultation with PF and H's Athlete Support team and they'll
[24:53] be happy to help you nail your race nutrition plan and help you
[24:56] perform at your best come race day.
[24:58] And over at teamoxygenaddict.com I think we've got the most
[25:01] comprehensive triathlon coaching programme for busy age groupers.
[25:05] If you're looking for high quality, proven coaching for
[25:07] Iron Man or 70.3 triathlon this year, you can check out the
[25:11] details of our coaching packages on our website.
[25:14] And the big news from this week onwards is Team Oxygen Addict is
[25:17] open again for new members. So if you're interested, there's
[25:21] a link in the show notes to book a membership call with us and
[25:24] see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[25:26] If you've already joined our waiting list during the summer,
[25:29] then we'll be getting in contact with you to offer you the chance
[25:31] to book a membership call first. But act act fast guys.
[25:35] We would love to have you be part of our team going forwards
[25:38] and help you reach triathlon goals for next year.
[25:41] So remember, there's links in the show notes so you don't have
[25:44] to remember them. And until next week, have a
[25:47] great safe training and racing week.

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