BRICK (bike-run) day 170km Bike 10km Run

Set off around 6am (pressed snooze - hour late). Cycled down to Brighton - put what turned out to be a great route into the garmin so country lanes all the way. The amount of times I have done it using the main roads, getting covered in car grime and having to stop to read the map every 15mins.

Can't recommend the garmin enough - the model I have is 310xt which lets you upload maps that you can follow. It has been a godsend.

Bike set up still troubling me. Dropped the saddle a few times which eased the left leg which now feels perfect, but then right knee had a few niggles. Think I probably need to see if I need to set it up for a slight leg length discrepancy - but not 100% sure which leg is behaving as if its longer!. Major plus point is I think i'm starting to know what to do to the position to alleviate the various niggles!

So 85km to Brighton - fairly easy pace; 3hr 30 and 3hr 20 back.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/35897664
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/35897679
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/35897700
(hadn't changed watch from run mode till the way back hence the three pages)

Then took george for a run in the buggy 10km. Ideally would have gone alone as would have been good to go at race pace, but had to get him out of the house.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/35897708

Good to get all that done. It's in the bank as they say.

It's two weeks till the half ironman and a few people reading this are training for that.
Doing well on the day has a lot to do with how you taper.
I have always been told that tapering from running takes 3 weeks, cycling 2 weeks and swimming 1 week. This is based on the load your body has to absorb. So most triathlon tapers will start 3 weeks out.
Very simply it's advised to cut the volume of training by about 2/3rds and the 1/3rd you do do should be high intensity/high leg turnover.
I think your trying to get your body accustomed to moving faster whilst allowing it to store glycogen for the muscles.
Certainly there is a phenomenon called neuromuscular adaptation where your body gets used to nerve impulses firing at a the frequency you train at. Many people try to up this - for instance pedalling for 30 second intervals on the turbo at much higher cadences 115etc (not too important about the load)

I'm not going to taper for the half ironman as that would take too many weeks out but thought i'd mention the above.

The extra time is apparently for making sure you have everything ready!