# The Perfect Ironman Taper: 5 Steps to Peak on Race Day | Ep 501

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 7 Aug 2024, 18 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/90107577/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-7-6%2F384368035-44100-2-aa965d604b625.mp3

In this episode, we present five crucial tips to help you effectively taper for an Ironman or a 70.3 triathlon. Learn about: The importance of tapering... How to balance fitness and fatigue... The optimal length and structure of a taper... Detailed strategies for maintaining race-day intensity without overtraining. We'll also cover nutritional guidance, mental preparation, and ways to stay focused during the taper period. Follow our guidance ahead of your race and you'll feel fit, fresh, and ready come race day. * * * * * * * * 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. Join the Team Oxygenaddict waiting list and be the first to find out when a space becomes available: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/waiting-list * * * * * * * * * * * * 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

[0:02] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict podcast.
[0:05] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:08] and hydration.com. You can personalise your
[0:11] fuelling and hydration strategy so you perform your best with
[0:14] 15% off your first order of electrolytes and carbohydrate
[0:18] fuel. The code Oxygen 24 at Precision
[0:21] Fuel and hydration.com. Welcome to the show, everybody.
[0:24] I'm your host, Coach Rob will be.
[0:26] And every week we've been you an episode of this podcast to help
[0:29] motivate and inspire you for your triathlon goals for this
[0:32] season. Listen, a couple of quick things
[0:35] you could do for us before we jump into today's episode.
[0:38] If you do like this episode, please consider following us on
[0:41] Spotify, our Apple Podcasts, and also if you're watching on
[0:45] YouTube, if you could like and subscribe, that would really
[0:48] help out the growth of the show. It helps the show get shown to
[0:51] more people by the algorithm on on the podcast players and on
[0:55] YouTube. So we'd really, really
[0:56] appreciate that. And secondly, if you're looking
[0:59] for help and advice with your triathlon training, please
[1:02] consider getting in touch with us.
[1:03] You can read all about what we offer at teamoxygenaddict.com
[1:07] and then you can e-mail us at help@oxygenaddict.com or there's
[1:11] a link in the show notes to book a call with me or one of the
[1:14] coaching team. We can discuss how we can best
[1:17] help you out with your triathlon goals for this season.
[1:21] On this episode of the show, we're going to be giving you 5
[1:24] tips on tapering for an Ironman or a 70.3 triathlon.
[1:29] Now, my aim of this episode is you get to the end of this
[1:33] episode and you're absolutely clear on why you should do a
[1:37] taper, how you should do the taper, what that taper should
[1:41] consist of in terms of your sessions, and other things that
[1:44] you need to think about regarding nutrition and
[1:47] regarding the mental aspects of the taper as well.
[1:50] And so let's kick this right off.
[1:52] So first up, why do we need to actually do a taper before a
[1:56] race? Well, first up, the idea of the
[1:59] taper isn't that you do no training.
[2:02] It isn't that you sit around and you do nothing and you get to
[2:05] race day and you're ready to go. There's a balance to be struck
[2:09] between doing the training each day and that increasing your
[2:14] fitness, but also doing the training each day and that
[2:19] increasing the fatigue level that you feel.
[2:22] So we're trying to strike this balance between doing enough
[2:25] exercise that you still feel good, that you maintain your
[2:29] fitness levels, but not so much exercise that we can't shed the
[2:34] fatigue. And that's the first key
[2:36] principle to accept that you have both fitness, which is
[2:40] gained by the amount of training that you do and you have fatigue
[2:44] which increases with the amount of training that you do.
[2:47] And ideally on race day, we want you to get to the point where
[2:51] you're very fit, but you have very low fatigue.
[2:54] And getting the balance of reducing the training down so
[2:58] that fatigue reduces without reducing the training down so
[3:02] you fitness doesn't reduce is the subtle art of the taper.
[3:08] Now lots has been written about tapering over the years and
[3:12] especially if we look at long distance Ironman triathlon.
[3:16] If we go back a ways, it wasn't uncommon for people to think and
[3:20] be told that the taper needs to be 4 or even 5 or in some cases
[3:25] six weeks long for an Ironman. And you would genuinely hear
[3:28] these discussions happening in Facebook groups or on online
[3:32] forums where people would get to four weeks out from race day and
[3:35] they would say, well, that's it. Now all the hard work's done,
[3:38] I'm going to rest up and I'm going to eat well and I'm going
[3:41] to be great for race day. Lo and behold, they get to race
[3:44] day. They'd feel completely flat,
[3:46] they'd feel tired, they'd feel unfit, they might be overweight
[3:49] and they would not have a good race at all.
[3:52] And this idea of the four to six week taper came originally from
[3:56] the pro triathletes of the day who back in the day we're doing
[4:01] huge, huge volumes of training and arguably to this day still
[4:04] are 4050 hours of training every week.
[4:08] Well, guess what, it's going to take a longer taper to freshen
[4:12] up from that volume of training than from the volumes of
[4:16] training that a typical age grouper is going to be doing.
[4:19] So we over the years have refined our team oxygen addict
[4:24] taper and we've got to the point where it's worked really well
[4:28] for hundreds, possibly thousands of athletes across a 10 to 15
[4:33] year period. Now I'm really, really confident
[4:35] in our taper and our two week taper leading to either an
[4:39] Ironman or a 70.3 if an athlete has done sufficient training in
[4:44] the lead up to this. So for all our coached athletes,
[4:47] they don't have a single worry about this.
[4:49] They're just going to follow the training plan.
[4:51] It's going to lead them to race day being very fit and also very
[4:55] fresh with low fatigue levels, feeling fantastic and ready to
[4:59] go on race day. If you're not coached by us, if
[5:01] you follow another training plans, there might be a bit of
[5:04] wiggle room in here, but the basic principle is going to hold
[5:08] true. You want your last big week and
[5:10] your last big weekend of training to be two weeks out
[5:13] before race day. And then it's going to be a two
[5:16] week gradual taper to get you to race day to the point where
[5:19] you're going to be feeling really fit but really fresh.
[5:23] So we're going to have a two week taper.
[5:26] This is the first thing we're going to talk about now.
[5:28] Our athletes are going to do their last really big week of
[5:32] training so that the last big weekend is 2 weekends before
[5:35] race day. They're going to essentially do
[5:37] a broken Iron Man across a weekend or a broken 70.3 across
[5:42] a weekend, and they're going to need recovery time from that.
[5:45] So the structure of the two weeks is going to look like a
[5:49] massive reduction in training volume, but there's also still
[5:53] going to be some intensity in there at or around race day
[5:57] intensity. So you get to race day feeling
[6:01] ready to race, feeling fresh with that feeling of knowing
[6:04] what those paces feel like in the swim, bike and run, but not
[6:08] so much that you're overly fatigued.
[6:10] So let's talk through in detail the overview of this two week
[6:14] taper. Now we've discussed what what
[6:17] the actual reasons for it are. So tip #2 the overview of the
[6:20] two weeks. We're going to start the two
[6:22] week taper Monday and Tuesday with a total 2 days of rest.
[6:27] We're going to really shed the fatigue that's accumulated over
[6:30] that long training plan and particularly over the big race
[6:33] simulation weekend that's just happened.
[6:36] And then from the Wednesday of the week to the Wednesday of the
[6:40] following week, we're going to really limit our sessions.
[6:43] We're mostly going to have one session a day.
[6:45] We're going to limit ourselves to 30 minutes of running.
[6:49] We're going to keep the swims at 30 to 45 minutes.
[6:52] We're going to do a maximum of an hour of cycling.
[6:55] So the volumes of those sessions are massively reduced from what
[6:58] you've been doing over the lead up to it.
[7:00] Within those sessions, we're going to have an appropriate
[7:04] amount of race specific pacing. So we might have run intervals
[7:11] at the pace you're aiming to run on 70.3 or Iron Man race day.
[7:16] We're going to have bike intervals at about the power
[7:19] that you're going to be racing at on race day.
[7:22] And similarly with the swimming, we're going to have intervals in
[7:24] there at or about the pace that you're going to be swimming on
[7:27] race day. The key is we're not going to do
[7:29] very much more than that. And for athletes racing Iron
[7:32] Man, they're going to hear the word interval and think that's
[7:35] going to mean high intensity. It's not.
[7:37] It doesn't need to be high intensity, it can perhaps be a
[7:41] slightly higher level than you would actually race that at Iron
[7:44] Man, but we don't want you going really, really, really hard.
[7:47] That is going to be of no benefit to you whatsoever.
[7:49] So again, periods of training at or around race day intensity
[7:55] followed by periods of easier training.
[7:57] And during this time from the Wednesday to the Wednesday, your
[8:02] body is going to shed the fatigue.
[8:04] You're doing enough exercise there to maintain the fitness
[8:07] you've previously built, but you can shed loads and loads of the
[8:11] fatigue. Well, here's the thing people
[8:13] often don't talk about during this period, it's very hard to
[8:18] still feel good. Your body's used to doing much
[8:21] more training mentally. You're used to doing much more
[8:24] training mentally. You're used to focusing on the
[8:27] training that you're doing, and all of a sudden now you've got
[8:28] all of this time to think about the upcoming race.
[8:31] It's really common for athletes to feel not great physically and
[8:36] not great mentally from the Wednesday 10 days out before
[8:39] race day to the Wednesday 3 days before race day.
[8:43] That's just part of it. So third tip, let's talk around
[8:48] how to balance rest and activity.
[8:53] You can apply yourself mentally to some other tasks during this
[8:56] time, but it's really crucial that you don't do more physical
[8:59] activity during there during this and accept that you are
[9:02] probably not going to feel great mentally or feel great
[9:05] physically during this period. But it's necessary to shed that
[9:09] fatigue. It's necessary to do less
[9:12] exercise than you used to. So you can spend the time during
[9:15] this time working on your mental strategies for the race.
[9:18] You can go over your race planning document.
[9:20] You can work out the power, the pace, the speed that you're
[9:23] going to race and ride at. You can finalise getting all the
[9:26] equipment that you need, all all sorted out, finalise your travel
[9:29] plans, all of that stuff, but try and get more rest.
[9:33] If you can get to bed earlier, if you can get naps in the
[9:35] afternoon, that's a fantastic way to make use of the extra
[9:38] time that's going to be freed up in your day.
[9:41] Just try and rest and recover. Now as I've said, you're
[9:45] probably not going to feel great through until the Wednesday
[9:47] before race day, but come the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of
[9:51] race week, you are suddenly going to turn a corner and you
[9:54] are going to start feeling fantastic.
[9:57] The Thursday, the Friday, the Saturday of race week, it's not
[10:01] unusual for athletes to really feel amazing and that's the
[10:04] feeling of peaking. That's what it means.
[10:06] The taper has worked. We've shed the fatigue, we've
[10:09] got the fitness and our form is rising and our body is peaking.
[10:13] We're ready to go mentally. We're ready to go for race day
[10:16] and you get to the point where for those three days you really
[10:21] are ready to race again. Key thing during these days is
[10:24] not to get caught up in doing more training than you mean to
[10:29] have it sketched out. Those limits of 30 minutes a day
[10:32] on swim or bike or run, they're going to hold you back for a
[10:35] really good reason. Trust that you need to shed the
[10:39] fatigue and that you will have great form come race day.
[10:43] And that's how we're going to get the balance between rest and
[10:46] activity. Now let's talk about nutrition
[10:51] and how we can approach this during our taper.
[10:54] By nutrition, I actually mean how much we're going to eat and
[10:57] what we're going to eat. The volume of food that you're
[11:00] going to eat needs to reduce during that first week of the
[11:03] taper period because you are training a lot less than you're
[11:07] used to. It's going to be a hard habit to
[11:09] break. We're used to feeding ourselves
[11:11] to fuel 6 hour bike rides in three hour runs, so we're going
[11:14] to have to reduce the amount of fuel that we take in.
[11:18] I think it's really important during this time.
[11:20] Eat loads of salads, eat loads of fruit, eat loads of veggies,
[11:24] eat loads of lean protein. It's not unusual to be really
[11:27] hungry during this period, but try and limit the amount of
[11:31] enormous bowls of carbs that you would eat because we don't want
[11:34] to be accidentally putting on a few pounds during the race taper
[11:38] period. About four days out from race
[11:43] day is the appropriate time to start thinking about carb
[11:46] loading. And if you're not sure about
[11:49] carb loading and there's loads of articles online, you can go
[11:51] out and read about it. But you are going to benefit
[11:55] come race day from having fully stocked glycogen stores.
[11:59] So the carb loading guidelines are 6 to 8 grammes of
[12:02] carbohydrate per kilo of body weight per day.
[12:06] Now I'd advise you to take those in in the form of pasta,
[12:10] potatoes, white rice, bread, bagels, things like that rather
[12:15] than sweets and ice creams and chocolates.
[12:18] Try and keep it as natural and healthy as you can, but having
[12:21] that extra carbohydrate has even been shown to soup and
[12:25] compensate your carb stores. I mean you can.
[12:27] You can store even more for race day, which is great because
[12:31] you're going to need it for race day.
[12:33] So the the sort of the three days out from race day, you can
[12:36] really start to add in those extra carbs and start to carb
[12:40] load for race day. That's really, really going to
[12:42] help you. The last tip I've got for you
[12:45] during tape a week is to really work on the mental aspects.
[12:50] As I've said, it's not uncommon for you to be feeling not great
[12:54] in the run up to race day. For the period from the
[12:56] Wednesday 10 days out to the Wednesday 4 days out.
[13:00] Use this time to spend a little bit of time focusing mentally on
[13:05] what you've done. Build up your confidence.
[13:08] Go back over your training diary and look at all of the sessions
[13:11] you've ticked off and look at all of the work that you've
[13:13] done. Spend the time with your race
[13:15] preparation document to make sure that if for example, you're
[13:19] using best bike split, know that the power levels you're going to
[13:23] ride to are going to be accurate.
[13:26] Know that you're clear on the kind of heart rate zones that
[13:28] you're going to be riding to. Know that you're clear on the
[13:31] kind of run paces and the swim paces that are going to be
[13:34] reasonable for you. Have a really clear plan for
[13:37] what you're going to do on race day.
[13:38] The race planning document's fantastic for this because it
[13:42] takes it all out of your head and it puts it down physically
[13:45] on a piece of paper once it's down there.
[13:49] But look, you might have concerns and worries, but there
[13:52] are two kinds of worries and concerns.
[13:54] There are those you can do something about, and for those
[13:57] you can make a plan for them using your race preparation
[14:00] document. There are those that you can't
[14:02] do anything about if you get a puncture on race day.
[14:05] Well, worrying about whether you get a puncture on race day isn't
[14:08] going to change that. It's just going to be wasted
[14:10] mental energy. But you can prepare for that by
[14:14] making sure that you know how to change a puncture, that you've
[14:17] got the appropriate kit with you, that you've practised it in
[14:21] the weeks leading up to the race itself.
[14:24] That might be a good use of an evening for people who are not
[14:26] confident. It's to practise changing that
[14:29] puncture while you're watching television and relaxing.
[14:32] So you get to the point that you're really calm and
[14:34] confident. If it happens on race day,
[14:36] there's nothing going to be gained by getting angry.
[14:39] You just have to deal with the situation and as long as you've
[14:42] prepared for all the situations and you've got a plan for them,
[14:46] well, that's all that you reasonably can do.
[14:49] So all of that being said, if you've got a race coming up
[14:54] soon, the temptation is it's undeniably going to be to do
[15:00] more and to go harder. During those two weeks leading
[15:03] up to the Iron Man, all of our feedback from our athletes over
[15:07] the years has been they've wanted to do that, they've
[15:10] wanted to do more sessions and they've wanted to go harder.
[15:13] The successful ones are the ones who've managed to answer that
[15:17] voice in the head to deal with that compulsion to want to go
[15:20] and train, and they've held themselves back.
[15:23] They've stuck to the taper plan and it's come good for them come
[15:26] race day. So if you're coached by us, no
[15:30] problem at all. Just stick to your training
[15:32] plan, stick to the taper plan, fill out your race preparation
[15:36] documents and get extra rest and recovery during the week.
[15:39] If you're not coached by us, the guidelines are all here for you
[15:43] just to resist the urge to feel like you need to do more,
[15:46] especially if you start to feel not great.
[15:48] You're in tape a week, know that that's expected and you'll get
[15:52] through it. And if you've got your training
[15:54] and your taper right, you'll start to feel fantastic a few
[15:57] days before race day. I hope this has really helped
[16:00] you out. I hope if you've got a race
[16:01] coming up soon that it goes really, really well for you.
[16:05] And I hope this episode has been really useful for you today.
[16:10] OK, then that brings us to the end of this week's episode.
[16:13] So here are some discount codes and deals for you.
[16:16] Over at Precision Fuel and hydration.com, use the code
[16:18] Oxygen 24 for 15% off your first electrolyte order.
[16:23] And over at teamoxygenaddict.com, I think
[16:26] we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme for
[16:29] busy age groupers. If you've enjoyed what you've
[16:31] heard today and the advice has helped you out, well, great
[16:34] stuff. I hope that's helped put some of
[16:36] your fears at rest and I know from some of the calls we've
[16:38] had, it's helping raise the right questions in the minds of
[16:42] people as to whether their current coaching relationship is
[16:46] working for them. If you're looking for a change
[16:48] or if you're looking for high quality, proven coaching for
[16:51] Iron Man or 70.3 Triathlon this year, you can just check out the
[16:55] details of our coaching packages on our website at
[16:58] teamoxygenaddict.com. And then if you're interested,
[17:01] there's a link in the show notes below.
[17:03] You can join our waiting list and you'll be notified if a slot
[17:06] becomes available and at that point you'll have a chance to
[17:09] book a call with us and see if you'd be a good fit for joining
[17:12] the team. So although we don't have slots
[17:14] available at the moment, we'll make those call appointments
[17:18] available to people as and when. We do have athletes who end
[17:22] their coaching packages during the season if and when that
[17:24] happens. So remember there's links in the
[17:26] show notes so you don't have to remember them till next week.
[17:30] Have a great safe training and racing week.
[17:32] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[17:35] Addict podcast. See ya.

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