If you are doing the double this year, a lot will depend on how you go at Ironman South Africa this weekend. Comrades Marathon is not far off either, but play your return to training by your recovery. Hear about what to do once you have recovered, on this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast.

Transcript

Brad Brown: Welcome back, this is the Ask Coach Parry podcast and a big weekend this weekend in Nelson Mandela Bay in Port Elizabeth, Ironman South Africa taking place on Sunday. Lindsey, we’ve got an Ironman related question, it sort of ties into Comrades as well, from Bonita Suckling. Bonita is doing the double this year and she wants to know; what should she be doing after Ironman as far as hitting the road to prep for the Comrades Marathon.

She says both events are just to finish, she’s not going for any great time. She just wants to make the cut-off. What should be the process following Sunday in the build-up to Comrades, when can she start training again and when can she like start upping things? Does she need to take a bit of a break?

Ironman as your final long Comrades training run

Lindsey Parry: That’s really going to depend completely on how the Ironman day unfolds and how she feels in the 48-72 hours post Ironman. If you really are just going there to enjoy the day and to just finish, then you can essentially treat Ironman as your final, long training run. Which would then mean you can just carry on training almost normally from the end of Ironman.

If there is stiffness and really significant fatigue that you can feel, then first you’ve got to take a couple of days off. Wait until you actually feel better, which could take anywhere between 3-7 days. Then after that point, you can jump onto maybe one of the finishers programmes.

Consistency is the key between Ironman and Comrades

What you’ll be looking for, from that point onwards, whether it’s an easy run or whether you need some time to recover, is that you just want to build in consistency. Not worry about packing in too many kilometres between the two events. It’s just about maintaining consistency and maintaining the fitness that you’ve built that’ll get you through Ironman. If you genuinely go easy, you’ll change very little. But if the day does turn out to be quite tough, just to get across the finish line, you’ll have to adjust it a bit going forward.

BB: Lindsey, the nice thing is too, I mean I’ve done it a few times where I’ve done the Ironman, Comrades double. As much as you want to keep on cross training and that sort of thing, there’s no real pressure to maintain the bike and the swim.

If you’re not feeling up for one of those sessions, the good news is you can take it off and that helps as well when you’re all of a sudden training for three disciplines, training for one feels a lot less. It’s actually, I love that time between Ironman and Comrades, it just makes me feel a lot better.

LP: Exactly, absolutely and because the focus is on making sure you do recover. You don’t want to pack too much training in there. You want to just maintain what you’ve built up to that point.

BB: Spot on. Bonita, best of luck for Sunday, we’ll see you out there I’m sure, looking forward to it. Lindsey, we’ll catch up again on Monday, I’m not sure what state I’m going to be in, but we’ll chat then. Have yourself a good weekend and we’ll chat again then. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.