Been looking at my training plan…I’ve done three centuries since April, got another five in the pipeline.
Happy with my bike for the first time in a long time, it’s not stellar, but it’s not going to kill me for the run, either.
Onto the run…I’ve seven 2+ hour jogs planned over the next eight weeks, too.
(27km, 24km, 29km, 32km, 35km, 17km, 32km, 32km)
Looking at them, it’s just a quirk of fate they are on consecutive weeks, I do have recovery time in between.
That last 32km jog is 11 days out from race day (the Wednesday of the previous week).
I am not a fan of a massive 3 week taper, preferring 7-10 days of half session, maintaining pace slightly above race pace and getting some good sleep.
What is the TT consensus of doing a long run 11 days out?
Fine?
Or, should I can it, having bagged my three 32km+ jogs already by that point?
It looks to me that you are already in a good place in all three disciplines and that you have some great training targets set up. So if we assume that you do those bike sessions / run sessions, as outlined above, then the 32K 11 days out does not seem necessary. You already will have three 32K plus runs in the bank. If it was me I would make it a 25K run and at the risk of stating the obvious all seven runs should be slow and perhaps you can experiment with nutrition
That far out???
That’s three weeks, I reckon I’d go mad - pent up.
Cheers @sparky - due to the way the cookie crumbles, my last “big” session is actually on Monday 21st June (I have moved my planned 325km ride, from the solstice, as that was deffo not a good idea!)
Just pretend this in the Sunday prior, here is my penultimate week;
So to me that June 21st session is key and from it you should get some useful information as to where you are. However if you are knackered from a 32K training run then in essence you are ruining that session and loose that useful information
So as everyone seems to be saying in this thread the last 32k ish run I believe should be 18-21 days out from race day.
As @r0bh says, benefits from the distance will not really be had - all the training you’re doing in that time is just stopping your body removing the stuff it’s built up to support the load you need - it doesn’t need 32km to remind itself of that.
I don’t see any value in a 32km run 11 days out. 18 days? I’m also unsure why you’d be stressed about not do a very long run. 1h45-2h aerobic running seems to be the sweet spot physiologically.
Well…I did a year of double run days once, so my 32km runs were done as 2 * 16.1km to work the long way, then home the short way to drop my bag off, then finish off.
I didn’t run so well that year off the bike, but, that could’ve been due to the wind and me over biking - ha ha ha!
Just to get that psychological distance in the head when it starts to hurt, to know I can keep running (or run/walk, just not walk-walk-walk)
Whilst I agree with the advice given so far for your situation, I don’t think it’s as black and white.
It all depends on what you’re used to in training. If you’ve a big run background and you run your 32km the way it’s supposed to be done i.e. slowly, then it won’t necessarily take all that out of you. For example a 3 hour run wouldn’t put me in any kind of a hole even if it was super hilly.
I guess the real point is whether the run has enough benefit as Rob and Jim mentioned, but the cost isn’t going to be the same for everyone. Again, for example, I have mates at a traditional running club that call a 10-12 miler their long run. But then other mates, me included, that will run 25kms in a lunch break.
I personally think that you need to know yourself, and no ‘one size fits all’ answer exists.
I find that if I taper too much, I get distinctly stale. My best bike efforts are on the back of a short but tough effort the day before (when i’m well trained and can recover well)… if I take a day off, I seem to get sluggish… YMMV.
