A great way to monitor your cadence on your long run is to count how many times your left or right foot hits the floor in 60 secs. Do this every 5th or 10minute during your run to make sure your technique isnt getting sloppy. If you are hitting 85-95 strides per minute your cadence will be quick and light. This will reduce floor time contact reducing breaking forces placing less stress on your body.
Who’s doing what & where:
Some great results in from the crew over these past few weekends:
*2 TN athletes were in action at the Half Ironman World Champs in Las Vegas at the weekend. For one – Rod Reynolds it has been the culmination of a 5 year dream to qualify for the world champs, he didnt disappoint. Rod finished 2nd in the over 49’s CEO challenge. Leandro Contessi also put in storming first time debut coming home in 5hrs 32 mins. It should be noted that it got up to 40 degrees during the race and many people didnt finish.
*Jamie Scott also raced his first half Ironman distance race at The Vitruvian on Saturday, in only his 3rd triathlon Jamie put in a blistering 4 hr 48 mins.
*The British Gas super trio of Chris Jansen, Mo Taylor and Lucy Papworth completed their mammoth journey cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats. In doing so the Team have managed to raise nearly half a million pounds for a childrens charity. Not bad for 2 girls who didnt own a bike only a few months ago!
*Simon Whittock put in a great result at the London duathlon at the weekend finishing 2nd his his age group.
*Tough guy Hamish Barbour also managed a 5th place overall at the Kerrera triathlon, showing the youngsters how its done.
Run session of the month:
Pacing focus:The 50/50 negative split long run
Next time you go out for your long run try to do a negative split. Aim to go faster in the second half of the run compared to the first.
For example: if you are leaving your house for a 60min run, go at a comfortable effort for first 30mins then try and pick up the pace for the second half back to your original destination. If you achieve the negative split you should arrive back at your doorstep within the 60mins.
This is a great way to test your pace control judgement. This will help in race situations where early pace control is all important so you dont blow up at the end.
TEAM NAGI Q & A
Question of the month
“I really struggle during the taper before an big event – is this normal ?”
The taper is one of the training phases that most triathletes really struggle with every year just before their big event, I know this feeling well because i used to hate it. It sounds silly, but when you take a moment think about it most triathletes spend their entire year in a constant state of fatigue so you would think they they would look forward to a bit a bit of rest and recovery! Nothing could be further from the truth.
I can honestly say I’ve had hundreds of similar emails over the years from my athletes pretty much complaining about exactly the same thing – feeling awful during the taper. No matter how much warning I give them about this I still get sent over dramatic emails stating that the end of the world is nigh and theres no way they are going to be in a position to perform well on race day (no names mentioned ;+). I always chuckle to myself when I read these emails because I can predict quite accurately when i will start receiving them. Athletes tend to have 2 big wobbles in the lead up to a big event, the second usually comes during the taper.
If you want to bring your body to a physical & mental peak on race day then a quality taper is crucial, the duration of which can be influenced by a number of factors. These could include:
1 – The distance you are racing over
2 – Your ability to recover
3 – Your injury/illness/training history leading into your race.
We taper because it allows you to cash in on all of the fitness reserves( training) you have put in over the season. Its like saving money in a bank, at some stage when its full you are going to cash in and spend your hard earned money. Most importantly you want to spend that money wisely and that means racing to the best of your ability.
As you progress through the taper it is common to feel some of the emotions/feelings below:
– Tired/fatigued/ flat
– Heavy legged /slow
– On the verge of coming down with an illness
– Anxious & agitated that you are not doing enough training
– At a loss because you are doing less training
– Impatience just to get on with it and race
– Worried that you are developing injuries
I will repeat again, this is all normal. Your body is going through many changes as you progress through a taper. Most importantly it is repairing itself for the big challenge you will be faced with. You’ve put in a lot of hard work during the season and your body has taking a pounding, to suddenly reduce the volume of training you are doing really isnt going to feel normal if your brain and body is programmed to be putting in big training weeks. This is where you need to trust in coach who is able to see the “bigger picture” around you, when you’re so focused on the training it can be very difficult for any athlete to see outside of their own “training bubble”.
It never ceased to amaze me over the years how i could feel all of these things, then on race morning when the gun went off I would feel amazing. Suddenly i would feel like I had several more gears to dip into if i needed it. You can and will come good eventually but sometimes this might not happen until you actually start racing.
It should also be said that the taper is a time for rest, training volume should be reduced but race pace intensity practice is still important to keep you sharp. It is definitely not the time to start planning on redecorating the house, going for long walks with the dogs or doing endless physical errands that involve you being on your feet. You have to be OFF your feet as much as possible, if you are overly active then you put the taper at risk. The whole idea is you still focus on putting in quality training time but them you make every effort to squeeze in as much sleep and rest as possible around this. The more sleep you get the better the quality of your taper the sharp you will be on race day.
To ensure a good taper you should:
1 – Get as much sleep/rest as possible
2 – Eat well and avoid anything that will potentially upset your stomach
3 – Get a massage to relax you (gentle not deep, especially during race week)
You should use this time to :
1 -Memorize – your race pacing & nutrition plan
2 – Visualize -the race in your mind, go from the start to finish and think how each stage should feel
3 – Plan – so you don’t leave things to the last minute.
4 – Switch off – do things or be with people that are un tri related. This will help take your mind off the up and coming race.
As you become more experienced you can refine your taper with each race you do, take the good things forwards and leave the bad choices behind. Its like anything in life you might not get it right first time but with practice you can formulate a plan that works for you. Then when you get this right it is amazing how well you can perform on race day.
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