Hi community,.
I’m currently building for an IM, and i was wondering what would be the best moment to significantly increase the training load and maybe place a diy training camp.
My training load is roughly 12/15h all year round, maybe i could go till 20/22 before the big day.
I can take some days off at work to be fully commited and recover well enough between workouts.
Things I don’t know are how I’ll handle it, and could it be beneficial?
Unfortunately, the only way you’ll know is to do it! So go for it!
I was just listening to the Training Peaks podcast, they had Dylan Johnson on talking about the “Unbound block” which is basically this - really upping your load before an event in a 2- to 3- week block. There are folks doing 30-40 hour weeks here. They key take-aways were don’t over do it based on your current volume, don’t do it for too long, probably dial back the intensity. Give yourself like 2 weeks to absorb it before the event.
How much time until the event? How stressful is your job? Do you have time and the ability to more gradually ramp up your volume, or is the mentioned time off mean you are looking to pack this into only like 2 weeks? Can you take half days for a while to have a more consistent volume increase? There’s a bunch of ways to slice it. Trying to get a few more parameters/limitations to help you put some more structure around it.
I would try to keep in mind that adaptation takes time and you need at least 4 weeks to see any significant impact so if anything I would try to schedule the increased training load (actually volume not load) couple of weeks before the big day.
When I prepped for my IM, I found the best time to ramp things up was around 6–8 weeks before race day. I usually sit at 12–14 hours a week like you, but I pushed it up to about 20 for a “camp” week and it really helped me with confidence and race readiness, as long as I kept the intensity under control. The key for me was making recovery the priority during and after, I noticed right away the difference between bouncing back strong versus feeling like I overdid it.