week off before a race

tarmacguy said:

I have my first road race this sunday, and have been training exceptionally hard for it, too hard it may seem and appear to have possibly strained my knee from all the hill climb work.

I have decided to take the week off and do nothing at all to give it a few days to settle down before the race, is this the right decision, or should i be just a little something to keep my legs rolling over in prep for my race.

Also if there is still pain on race morning, will taking pain killers effect my performance at all?

cheers

Taking a full week off before a race is a bad idea. It would be better to back off your training time and do about 70% of your normal weekly load at similar intensity. That and reschedule your week as necessary so that you have a full day off two days prior to your race and then a fairly easy ride with a few short efforts to wake your muscles up the day before your race. Coming into a race after a week totally off the bike is really tough.

If you must take some rest for your knee, then take a few days off at the beginning of the week followed by an easy ride four days out, a normal intensity but shorter ride three days out, rest two days out and a wake up/shake out ride (easy, fairly short and a few short hard efforts) the day before your race.

If you need painkillers to race, then you really need to skip the race. They may or may not hurt your performance depending on exactly what you take but you're asking for a more serious injury by masking the pain prior to racing. Is this race really worth sacrificing your long term progress?

tarmacguy said:

I have my first road race this sunday, and have been training exceptionally hard for it, too hard it may seem and appear to have possibly strained my knee from all the hill climb work.

I have decided to take the week off and do nothing at all to give it a few days to settle down before the race, is this the right decision, or should i be just a little something to keep my legs rolling over in prep for my race.

Also if there is still pain on race morning, will taking pain killers effect my performance at all?

cheers

if this is your first ever race, expect a tough day. No matter how hard we all train in the run up to our first race, for most of us the experiencing is short, bewildering and in my own case humiliating. Still - it's coming back and doing that little bit better every time that gets you there in the end.

Train shorter but high intensity until 3 days before the race, then 2 days rest, then the day before do a short ride with some short efforts near to maximum to get the motor revving.

basically 6 days before the race any training you do won't have time to improve your fitness in time - but you want to keep your rhythm, and not get sluggish.