By Matteo Cigala
Coming into the final week before a race, the bulk of your preparation should be done, meaning you can keep your mind stress-free and relaxed.
Given the
importance of the seven days leading up to a target event, you need to do
everything you can to ensure your legs are at 100 per cent come race day.
The key
components of a good final week are simple and effective as follows:
Nutrition
This is quite
possibly the most crucial aspect of your preparation, particularly if the event
you are training for is long-distance or likely to be intense for a long period
of time.
As your training
tapers down in duration, so too will the calories needed to sustain your body.
However, if you are hungry then eat. The final week before the event is not the
time to lose the last kilo or starve your body of nutrients.
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Don’t go over-board and eat as if you are racing a Grand Tour. But you must fuel your body for your training the best way possible. This means eating until you’re content and follow your natural diet as closely as possible, with plenty of fruits and vegetables.
The two days
before an event are usually where people can go wrong. The rule of thumb is to
carbo load and give your body the largest stores of energy you can. This, for
most people, will begin two dinners before the race; eating more processed
foods - pasta, white rice or bread, which is easier for your body to digest -
and in slightly greater quantities than usual.
The day before
the race, make sure you have healthy snacks on hand and you can sip on an
electrolyte drink during the day. The night before the race should be your
biggest meal so you have time to digest it.
Eating a mountain
of food on race morning with make you feel heavy and sluggish. IN general, a healthy breakfast can be porridge, rice, pasta, toast, eggs -
nothing fried or heavy that can be slower to digest.
We need to bear in mind that if we eat something heavy to digest, the body will focus too much on the digestion process rather than the actual effort.
Sleep
More is always
better than less here. If you feel tired in the afternoons try a 30-minute
power nap instead of a second cup of coffee.
Anything less than 40 minutes will generally not detract from your sleep that night.
Training
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After the months
of training leading up to this event, it’s easy to get carried away with overdoing
it in the final week.
The most
up-to-date research shows that the best way to taper for an event is to decrease
training duration by as much as 50 per cent while maintaining up to 90-95 per
cent of the intensity.
This means your sessions will be much shorter but require absolute mental focus.
The purpose of maintaining your intensity is to keep your legs sharp and your mind on the task. Taper week is just as much a mental task as it is physical.
Life
Once your allocated training time is complete
it is important to ‘Switch off’ and relax to enjoy other aspects of your life.
It is all too easy to focus entirely on
the event and mentally exhaust yourself come race day. Do some stretching but
not over do-it as over stretching will take away too much muscle tension which
is important to feel the same on the bike. After this forget about the event.
Try to maintain a schedule as normal as possible and never change anything that you don’t need to. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
You’ll be grand
Once race day has arrived, eat a healthy breakfast, stay hydrated and then set your mind on the task ahead.
If all the preparation is done correctly, you should feel 100 per cent ready to go.
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