The taper weight gain: I'm not satisfied with "we bloat"

Dave Tallo

Patrick's earlier thread on acceptable weight gain during taper (see https://endurancenation.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/23650/how-much-weight-is-acceptable-to-gain-during-race-week#latest) has me thinking. 

Fine - we put on weight during taper for logical reasons.  But the fact remains that along comes race day, I'm carrying an extra 6 pounds up the hills on a bike, or an extra 8 pounds  around 26 miles on foot.  And by my calculations, that's about 30 dura ace groupos, or the equivalent of 12 pairs of extra light race flats (conincidentally, the ones I'm rocking in the race to cut weight) in a knapsack, or half the weight of a UCI-legal bike.    iow, a bunch of weight.

I get that water retention is a byproduct of tapering, but can it be lessened?  And, although optimal hydration is, well, optimal, is it really necessary to retain that much?   And, are there factors (gender, bmi, absolute mass, bf% etc), that play a role in the amount retained?   Can this be tweaked?  I think of a lot of the people I see at high profile races where they just look cut during race week, where I kinda feel like a Queen-Sized pillow stuffed into a standard-sized pillowcase.

(btw, I bought the wrong size pillowcases on Amazon earlier today). 

  

DAVID RICHMOND

u tried fasting during taper?

Satish Punna

Hey @Dave Tallo have you weighed yourself during a race after the swim and the bike and during the run?  

It seems to me that the extra  lbs you have on race morning may not be an issue as the race progresses through the entire distance. 

Al Truscott

I will be taking a BF% Tanita scale with me to my race next week, and will continue my usual wake-up daily weight check. I do not believe that I gain nearly as much as others have claimed in these threads. I'll report back...

Larry Peters

I actually cut a little weight & body fat during taper last week (granted, it was only a 70.3 and my bf and weight was a little high in June-July for whatever reason [probably me not being careful enough with portion size and me overestimating how much I needed to eat to fuel workouts]). I don't know how accurate my scale is, but in mid-late July my body fat was high 13's to low 14's (%). In the first week of taper (1st week of august), I was down to low 13's and my weight was down from mid 190's to ~190 lbs. The morning before my race I weighed in at 187.8 with a 12.7% body fat.

For me, I eat dramatically less fiber during high training volume periods (can't stop to go to the bathroom). This means lots less vegetables than I ate in recent years when I wasn't engaged in longer periods of endurance training. So with the shorter workouts of taper week, I went back to eating a lot more (raw) vegetables (more fruit too) and also tried really hard to cut weight by eating less (maybe fasting?). I knew it would help my performance, and I finally had the determination/mood/focus/state of mind (whatever) to be more careful with intake. It wasn't a big change, but I was happy! I find it really tough to cut weight & keep it off.

I'm still staying below 190 and in high 12's to low 13s (%bf). I'm hoping to cut a little more in the coming weeks to improve my fall marathon performance. But my weight has never been much below 185, so I don't expect to cut much (I'm 6'2.5'').

If anything maybe this conversation will give us all more motivation to question whether or not we need that next bite, or whether we can eat half of what we planned to eat.

I just read this related article. No big revelations, but some may enjoy it (I guess trying to channel that last statement may be helpful): 4 Ways to Rethink Race Weight by John Post

http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/news/articles/2017/08/rethink-your-race-weight.aspx#axzz4pktgV0cO

"Practice good old fashioned self-control: Go to your local sub shop and order more than you generally can consume. For argument's sake, say a foot long sub with lots of veggies. After downing half, you're close to full—a point where The Calorie Myth author Jonathan Bailor has your brain sort of fighting itself. In other words, he says you get "pleasure if I eat more, [because] I'll enjoy the taste." But, in a truer sense, he says "I'll get pleasure if I don't eat it. I'll stay true to one of my core values, I'll feel I'm doing something meaningful, I'll feel strong, I'll feel proud.""

Originally from: http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/news/articles/2017/08/rethink-your-race-weight.aspx#ixzz4pxTl6tnY

Leslie Knight

During my ironman  taper, I lost three pounds. Only time in my life I ever lost weight by accident. Then I gained six pounds during the race that never came off until my next official diet. It all makes no sense to me.  

Peter Noyes

The last time I really was focused on race weight and proper tapering and all that was back in 2015. When I am really "in the zone" I haven't had the taper weight gain. I religiously logged every single thing I ate the entire build. I was very lean. The strategy was a base of 1800 calories and add to that all the makeup calories from exercise. Eating that little during the taper is pure torture. I would chew a lot of gum. It was quite difficult to be used to eating 3000 calories on a swim + run day and then switch to 1800 calories for the taper, but it was possible. I recorded my lowest weight 5 days before the race. I didn't weigh myself after, but on race day I wasn't feeling bloated at all. I upped the carbs for the few days before the race and also drank a ton of water and gatorade endurance.

In the ultra running I have done over the past few years I have gained all sorts of weight during the taper. I attribute this to my lack of focus on counting calories, boredom and nervousness during the taper which makes me snack, and also perhaps not drinking enough fluids.

Here are the logs from that build:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z7IZPbxPF7MQgpYD0_mZGSckJu8D4knRXi4sA8vC2ec/edit#gid=0

Gordon Cherwoniak

I don't have a scale at event but I see 6-8 lbs as a lot of gain, even for a guy racing at 225-230lbs.  If I have weight gain in the taper it's mostly because of eating like I'm still training for a heavy volume.  Having said that my last weigh at an IM is check in so I don't have any metrics on the final 3 days.

John Culberson

Taper = Maximal  Muscle Recovery; Muscle is in the "Fluid Compartment"
Muscle "likes" water and optimal muscle health involves 100% hydration
Think of it as "Muscle Optimization" rather than "Bloating."
Any extra salt will distribute water throughout your fluid compartment... not just in muscle... then again, we all add a few gallons on race day.