QOTW: How should I approach back to back IRONMAN races?
By bethany
With the change in format of IRONMAN Florida this past weekend, many athletes are looking for another shot at IRONMAN sooner than they were expecting. I have heard from two athletes this week who are considering IRONMAN Cozumel which means only four weeks between events. Today’s question was specifically about how to approach this short window of time between events.
The very short answer is, it depends. (Isn’t that always the answer?) It depends on what your volume was like before, if you have any injuries, and how hard you rode and ran at Florida. The good news is that it generally takes most folks around four weeks between big events to recover. In fact, I have had some of my best performances exactly four weekends after an IRONMAN, the race giving me a little fitness boost which was brought into play after adequate recovery. However, the bad news is that the recovery timeline varies greatly between people, and also, generall,y the more experienced you are at these types of events the shorter your recovery timeline. The timeline is also affected by how your race actually went. Did you end up walking most of the run? Did you bike too hard …read more
Source: Energy Lab
