12 Feb Your questions answered #2 – by Shem Leong
Q. How to approach an half marathon 3weeks before a 70.3? I would like to use it as a training.
Good question. At this point in your preparation, your long bike and runs should already be race- specific, meaning each time you head out for one of these sessions is a race rehearsal. How are you going to pace and feed yourself over the 90km bike and 21km run. If your training has been consistent, you would also be carrying a fair bit of fatigue, which is fine.
A 21km half marathon, 3 weeks out is the perfect way to put the finishing touches on your race prep. You’re fit right now but I would resist the urge to treat this as a half marathon PB attempt. Keep your eyes on the big day, the 70.3 down the road, and use this as a purely training run. You can maximize the value of this by building a bit of structure around the 70.3. Here’s how:
1) Don’t taper for the half marathon. Train as you would normally and just approach it as a full distance training run.
2) Don’t give yourself a few ‘recovery days’ from it. Just get on with the last few weeks of training before you start to rest up when you start your taper 7 – 10 days out.
3) Tire your legs out before the run to mimic race day conditions. Jump on the bike trainer and do 10 – 20 mins easy warm up followed by 30 mins All Out Time Trail in a big gear turning 45 – 55 cadence.* Don’t hold back on this section – give it all you got. You should aim to finish with rubbery legs. No cool down. Get to the race as soon as possible and run the best 21km that you can pull out on the day. Be aware of pacing and nutrition and remind yourself how you want to execute the run on 70.3 race day.
* If you are not used to this kind of long and hard TT efforts on the bike trainer, you can break it into (3 x 8 mins All Out/ 2 mins easy spin) recovery
4) Recovery from a ‘big training day’ such as this one is important. Make sure your get on the have a good meal/ get on the foam roller and then have a nice long nap.
