Training through races - Part 2

Member

Welcome back!

Another race I would like to do is a duathlon on Sunday, March 20. It's a 2mi run, 16 mi bike, and 2 mi run. Running is my priority, but I'd like to do the du mostly for experience and it just seemslike fun. Again, I don't want it to interfere with my mileage, so I'm thinking some careful planning should set this out well. I'm just looking for the best way to approach it.

With just running, my mileage would be something similar to this:
(week - end date | mileage) [for this week, it looks like (2/12 | 44)]
(2/19 | 49)
(2/26 | 52)
(3/5 | 50)
(3/12 | 55)
(3/19 | 57)
(3/26 | 60)
It's not set in stone and it would vary depending on how much recovery I felt I needed, but you get the idea.
Typically I'll roughly use a 0/1/2/1/2/1/3 format for mileage ratios, in that order, from Sunday-Saturday. Most of the mileage is easy miles. For the week leading up to the du, that would have to be changed so that I'm not doing a 16 or 17 mile long run the day before the race. And it would have to change for the next week, probably eliminating most of the mileage for the week. The du is on a Sunday, but it will most likely cut a lot of mileage out of the week because it only counts as 4 miles running, but is pretty taxing and demanding at least a day or two of recovery. I expect it will be easier than the offroad du I did, but that was very strenuous and took at least 4 or 5 days to recover to the point where I could resume normal mileage.

Suggestions?

Member

I'm totally in agreement with you of the strategy of training through races. I'll go into some marathons without a taper. The PR's are nice, but tapering probably won't help you in the long run. If you want to maximize your potential, you need to be patient and most importantly you should be able to train through races.