rest days in half ironman 20 week plan??

Well, it's certainly "safe".  Whether it's for you or not is harder to answer.  The plan is designed to attempt to provide adequate recovery, but everyone is different (both fitness-level and outside 'constraints').  So the plan should work for most 'as is', but may require you to adust it to fit your particular circumstances.

IMO (as someone who has never started an HIM) 20 weeks seems pretty short, and therefor packs a lot of training into a short amount of time.

I took 20 weeks to prepare for my first Oly.

There's an assumption of a base level of fitness for the 20 week plans.  That base is stated in the plan description.

I would say that 20 weeks is a long build to a specific race; you would definitely need to arrive at week 1 with a base level of fitness but for most events I would suggest a 12 week program would be appropriate.

For the OP - there is nothing wrong with a program that has no (or few) rest days.  Whether or not it will work for you will depend on many factors including athletic background, ability to recover, work schedule, family committments, etc.

Shane

I found active recovery days vs. a full day off are better for me physically.  Mentally though a full day-off can do wonders.  As others stated, part of this will be learning what works best for you and being able to adjust accordingly.  

The Beginner 20 week RPE plan (Bronze) has rest days every week

The Half Iron 20 week (Silver) has does go six weeks (8-13) at one point with only one rest day


If you are concerned about the volume in the Silver plan maybe do the Bronze plan





Edited by mrbbrad 2009-10-27 3:50 PM

+1

 

I just finished that BT plan (20 week HR based HIM silver plan) for my first HIM. I thought it was a great plan and I will use it again next season. For me, active recovery is better. I enjoyed the plan and didn't find it too difficult due to a lack of complete rest days. There were a lot of days that had pretty light swims that I felt were "active recovery days".

It totally depends on your abilities and where you're currently at in your fitness. I'd say give it a go and adjust accordingly.

Edited by Mirg 2009-10-27 4:05 PM

I just finished my first half Ironman and had the best race of my life (shattered my goal by 23 minutes) and though I didn't quite follow that 20 week plan (I actually was at quite a bit less mileage since I started training for it 8 weeks out and got sick 4 weeks out), I did make sure to throw in easy recovery days instead of taking days off. In all, the only days I took off was the travel day two days before the race and the day after the race itself. From what I've read, a short easy recovery day should help your body to repair itself faster from a hard workout than if you took the day off. I think this was quite important as I raced a 5k, duathlon, or triathlon every weekend leading up to the race and actually ended up sore after an extremely challenging duathlon the weekend before, however I stuck to the plan of not taking a day off no matter how easy I needed to make that day to recover and it seemed to work quite well. Also, I don't know if racing every weekend hurt or helped, but... I just really like racing...

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I have use the HIM and IM plans.  I had to shuffle workouts some through the week due to "life".  That meant I often did not have a day off.  My short days were like active recovery it seemed and I really liked it.  I seemed to only take days off when I was traveling and could not get a workout in.

i had already finished a 16 week olympic and then jumped into HIM bridge 12 week.  1 rest day a week is a powerful thing. 

i probably don't need it personally but it helps to get me mentally prepared for upcoming workouts.