Aviva Ironman 70.3- Race Day Do's and Dont's

Dear Aviva Ironman 70.3 Athletes,

I hope your taper is coming along nicely and that you didn’t ride too hard or too long weekend. It was nice to see so many of you out there on the road getting comfy in your aero- tuck. 7 days more- Aviva Ironman 70.3 is definitely in the air and you should be getting excited!

You may start to feel a little more tired and sore and lethargic- Don’t worry! This is simply your brain telling your body to ease off in this final week as it winds down into “rest and repair” mode. Your job this week is to keep on “teasing “ your arms, legs, heart and lungs with a bit of work in all the 5 systems; Speed, Tolerance, Neuromuscular, Endurance and Strength, so that they stay hungry for more, while giving them ample time to recover.

Here’s a check list that will help you have a successful day.

Pre- Race

DOs:

• Send your bike in for a service. Look for frayed cables, cracked sidewalls and cuts in the tyres, a worn chain (I just changed mine and it rides like a dream), squidgy brakes. Check that the spoke tensions are equal and that the shifting is accurate. Tighten all the screws in your cleats and all the ones holding your cockpit together.
• Get some new goggles (nice to see where you’re going) and try them out at least once in the coming week.
• Get a massage in the first half of the week.
• Add salt to your food. Start stockpiling Sodium and Magnesium in your body. With this weather we’ve been having, you’re gonna lose a ton of it out there.
• Stay well- Like a finely tuned F1 super-car, the fitter you are the more susceptible you are to picking up bugs and nasty infections resulting in fevers, colds, gastric, diahohreah, vomiting. Eat well, load up on Vitamin C and get that extra hour a night of sleep.
• Work out in detail your nutrition plan for raceday- How much of what are you going to carry and where are you going to carry it?

DON’Ts:

• Change the height/ position of your saddle! 
• Stuff your face for 3 days going into the race to “Carbo-Load”. A sensible diet in the week, with a full meal on Friday night or Saturday lunch will ensure that your glycogen (energy) stores are full and that you’ll have time to clear out any access.
• Don’t go overboard with hydration using plain water. The access will flush out salts along with it. Go for moderate amounts of sports drink instead.

That is a lot to keep in mind during the final week. Truth is, getting to the start line of any long course triathlon is really half the battle. Once the horn goes off, it really should feel like a hard training day with lots of friends all in their very best gear!

Race Day

DOs:

• Start the day with a simple breakfast that’s easy to digest. This is just to get the digestive juices flowing.
• Have 2 glasses of water to hydrate the liver.
• Bring a snack to munch on as you set up in transition. You might be there for upto 2 hrs before the horn goes off. So stay topped up nutritionally, sip at a sports drink and have a gel before the race for a mental and physical advantage.
• Do line up in the appropriate place on at the start. If you’re not that strong a swimmer, it’s a better idea to line up towards the rear so that you can calmly take your bearings and look for a suitable draft before hitting the water. Place yourself too far forward and you’ll get a ton of people swimming over you (an experience similar to drowning).
• Sight frequently- look where you’re going. Don’t rely on the blindly following the person in front of you- he might be charging towards the wrong buoy.
• Find a draft in the water. It saves energy.
• Go out easy on the bike and build into your ride. The 3 lap course makes for easy pacing. Easy- Moderate- Comfortably Uncomfortable. (Read that last one again and then go think about it.)
• Eat on the bike. As a rule of thumb, aim for 200 calories an hour. Remember you need to run a half marathon after you get off the bike. On your training rides, one gel an hour may get you comfortably to the end of the ride (at which point you then proceed to pig out), but on race day, you’re eating for the run. You can never absorb as much calories as you burn while you’re on the go, so you’re eating to minimize the calorie deficient in order to keep from bonking on the run.
• Get out of the saddle from the aero position once in a while to give your butt, back and legs some relief. The climbs are a good place to do this.
• Be responsible. Ride Safe. There are others out there enjoying their big day. Don’t take unnecessary or stupid risks by squeezing into little spaces or getting caught in the position where you need to slam on the brakes. Yes, it’s a race, and we want to put out our best effort and yes we also want to finish the race!
• Do call out if you’re passing but don’t swear in the same sentence.
• Start the run easy with small, light steps. This will help you get used to the change from riding to running. Stay easy, and don’t try to force the pace. Your rhythm will come as you progress into the run. Run conservatively and only as fast as you can while holding your form you’ll be grateful later on.
• Keep eating on the run, keep taking salt. The weather recently has been hot and nasty, you’ll be losing a ton of salt.
• Smile- It helps with the pain, seriously.
• Stop early and stretch out properly if you get that crampy feeling. Don’t wait till it’s too late.
• Always thank the volunteers and be nice to them. They’re out there for you.
• Do push yourself in the closing stages of the race. Keep your eyes fixed on the runner in front of you and try to pull them in.

DON’Ts:

• Don’t be afraid to sprint up to the next guy ahead to swap for a faster draft- could be worth it!
• Don’t hit back when you get hit/ punched/ grabbed. It’s nothing personal. Open water is not the place to lose your temper- for safety reasons as much as for energy conservation ( think of your skyrocketing HR, as the adrenalin kicks in if you decide to retaliate- what a waste of energy). There are hundreds of other arms flailing about out there in the murky waters, it’s not anyone’s fault. Just stay calm and get out of each other’s way and hang in there. The field will soon thin out.
• Don’t worry that your heart is absolutely pounding by the end of the swim leg. The sudden change from a supported horizontal position to a vertical position will make you think you’re having a heart attack. This is normal, take an easy jog easy to your bike and think about getting through T1 quickly.
• Don’t chug half a bottle of water/ electrolytes/ sports drink in the transition. This will quickly end up sloshing about in your stomach. Don’t stuff your face with an energy bar/ slurp down a double caffeinated gel. There’s plenty of time to feed on the bike. Give yourself sometime to settle down on the bike before you start nibbling away.
• Don’t try the “jumping onto the bike with the shoes clipped in” thing unless you have practised this. You could end up with a bloody toenail-less toe.
• Don’t hammer it out of T1 even if you feel great. Your girlfriend/ wife/ kids will be impressed but your legs will be flooded with Lactic Acid right at the start.
• Don’t spend all day steering from your elbow pads. If you are unable to stay seated comfortably in the aero position for most of the race, then it’s not very aero, right? Book an appointment with me to get fit properly after the race.
• Don’t be afraid to adopt a structured run/walk strategy. By imposing regular breaks, you’ll be able to run with better form for the duration of the half marathon.
• Don’t throw your Powergel wrappers on the floor : )

That’s all from me, I wish you all the very best on race day and look forward to seeing you smiling out there!

And to my ironguides/ TrackAttack athletes- "ALL OUT!"

Shem

Athlete’s Circle/ ironguides Coach- Singapore

**Your Best is our Business**

shem@athletescircle.com

shem.leong@ironguides.net

Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore Training Camp

Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore Training Camp
(26-28 Feb 2010, Changi Beach Club)

conducted by ironguides Head Coach Vinnie Santana and Singapore coach Shem Leong.

Final Preparation for Aviva 70.3 Pt 1: The Taper

Dear Aviva Ironman 70.3 Athletes,

At this stage of preparation, with the months of hard work behind you and a mere 2 weeks until the big day, you should all be close to your fittest now. You’ve done the late night track sessions, given up a social life for 5am bike rides, and rushed to the pool after work to get a swim in. Well Done! There’s not a lot more you can do to improve your fitness but how do you taper just right to get to the start line in peak form, feeling fantastic and raring to go? Too much rest could see you feeling flat and lethargic while increasing or even maintaining your current training load may not give your body a chance to fully recover.  

Remember that training session when you were able to hammer it up climb and drop the rest of the gang? Or what about when you felt like you were flying over the last few kms of a supposedly long easy run? Or that night when you could have swum forever? You may not have known it but at these times, when you were “in the flow” and your energy and power came effortlessly and in abundance, you might well have been “Peaking”- Triathlon’s “aligning of the stars”- where mind, body and soul are all in sync, brining you to powerful place where physical performance and self confidence are both riding high.

How can we time this peak for Race Day? What can we do to get to the start line with that unstoppable feeling? In my experience many factors help us to bring on a peak. One of the most important ones is getting the taper right.

Tapering:

At this stage, 2 weeks out, hopefully you have just finished a solid block of hard training and are feeling pretty fatigued. Taper is a period of reduced training load designed for your body to rest and repair while all the physiological adoptions occur. You may have heard some athletes talk about “soaking up” all the hard work- this is what they are referring to. Taper right and you will get to race day feeling fresh, full of energy and raring to go. If you train between 8- 13 hours a week, I recommend a 10 day taper. A shorter taper is needed is you train less than this.

Here are some general rules of thumb that I use in planning my athlete’s programme. Hope you find them useful!

a.    Tapering is not a period of complete rest. 10 days of doing nothing will see you very well rested up, but also feeling flat, lethargic and possibly carrying a few extra kilos. We all know you triathletes can eat!

b.    Keep the training sessions regular- the same frequency as before. Instead of skipping full days of training to get Rest, head out there as many times as you would do on in a normal week. Keeping the training stimulus regular will keep the engine purring instead of turning off the ignition altogether. You can also use the extra time stretching to make sure you stay supple.


c.    Reduce the volume. A safe rule that is commonly used is to reduce training load to 50% of total, 10 days out, and to further half it (25% of total) in the last week. For example, if you usually do a 16km run on a Sunday, run 8km 2 weeks out and then 4 km the week before. 

d.    Keep some intensity in there- a light 15 min jog will work up a light sweat but it’ll do little to activate the upper limits of your cardiovascular range that you have worked hard to achieve. By keeping some intensity in your training with short sharp intervals, you will still be stimulating all the right systems used on race day. Gaseous exchange, aerobic and anaerobic respiration, muscular strength, neural firing patterns, elasticity of connective tissue, cellular energy production; these are some of the important systems that you will continue to activate (in small doses) during taper to keep them ticking over. Here are some sets for you to try out that should do the trick:

i.    15 x 400m run with 45sec rest interval. 4 easy, 4 moderate, 4 comfortably uncomfortable and the last 3- HARD.
ii.    7 x 200m in the pool with 20sec rest interval- 3 easy, 2 moderate and the last 2 All Out 
iii.    1.5 hr easy- moderate bike with 3 x 8 mins All Out time trial efforts thrown in randomly.  

e.    Watch what you eat during taper, especially in the last week where training load is cut down drastically. Remember that your calorific burn rate is cut down as well so you don’t need to, and won’t get away with, stuffing your face after a short session. In fact, because of the reduced training load, you would be storing glycogen (carbohydrate stores) just by eating the same portions. No need to pig out at the pasta Party. If there ever was a time to eat healthy, that would be now.

f.    All the training sessions that you put in the last week/ 2 weeks, should leave you “wanting more”. Mentally this allows you to put aside something for race day. Physically, you want to perform the sessions hard enough just to tease out the right physiological response to keep that system ticking over. Don’t kill yourself on any sessions during this time to “test your fitness”. Trust in the many hours that you have already put in, overdoing any training session will hamper your body’s ability to recover fully.

g.    It’s weird but the fitter we are, the more easily we get sick. Top up on Vitamins and Anti-Oxidants to keep our immunity high.

In Part 2, I’ll be sharing more on preparing for the big day in terms of  nutrition, pacing, and some other important Do’s and Don’ts- So stay tuned!

Feel free to drop me a note if you have any thoughts on this newsletter.

Enjoy your Training!


Shem Leong
Athlete’s Circle Coach
ironguides Singapore
shem@athletescircle.com