[dela]

dela on April 28, 2004 at 4:40 am #9184

G'day,
Was just interested to hear some ideas as to how to structure a training week in which you are racing on the weekend. It is not the main goal race for the season, but is still relatively important. The race is 10k, and my training up to this point has been as follows.

Building up to 100km over 10 weeks, introducing strength enduro and some speed work from week 6 onwards. In the past i've always just rested for a day or two before a less important races and only tapered for my key race. However i've heard that for moderately important races such as the one coming up you can race well on a one week taper, and that it won't really affect your training for your key race further down the track. An example of the kind of taper i mean is as follows:

n.b All sessions have a good 10-15min warm up and cool down.

Mon: 5*400 m on 400 recovery
Tues:4*400m on 400 recovery
Wed: 3*400m on 400 recovery
Thurs: 1*400m, 2*200m, 4*100m
Fri: Rest
Sat: Race.
Sun: Recovery run

Then continue back into normal mileage
on monday.
What do you think?
Looking forward to any replies.
Cheers,

Dela.

[CoachKW]

CoachKW on April 28, 2004 at 7:45 am #27537

I've seen that taper espoused for THE key race of the season. I think your backing down too much for an early season race. I'm not so sure I would be on the track every day prior to a mid season 10k. You'd be better off just doing steady state runs all week with the exception of maybe doing some threshold level repeats about 5 days before, but that's because my preference is to maintain the training cycles that you ordinarily experience.

You do want to make sure that you recover sufficiently afterward by not doing any too long or hard for about 3-4 days afterward.