From “A” Race to “B” Race

You just smashed your “A” Race and adrenaline and endorphin levels are still skyrocketing. You are still celebrating your achievement with epic Instagram posts, but then, all of a sudden, your training buddy is posting #roadtoBrace. What?!? Already?!? It’s time to check your Training Peaks again.

It’s quite common to schedule some shorter distance races just after your main season competition. The logic with that is to capitalize on the current level of fitness and focusing a little more on speed and power. It's also a good chance to get away from those long boring endurance sessions on the trainer. Heart Rate spikes high, intervals at Tempo, all-out 50 mt in the pool!

But the psychology of Triathletes sometimes is completely different.

We feel justified to take one more day off, find excuses not to complete assigned workouts, complain about  injuries (which more often than not are psychosomatic) Welcome to the post A race blues. You’ve lost your focus and not entirely sure how to play it. That’s ok. And it's totally normal. It's part of the process.

The days leading up to our “A” Ironman are meticulously planned, your hydration, your rest, your training, your nutrition…the devil is in the detail and we’re making sure all that training comes to fruition with these details. The jokes about tapering triathletes are funny cause they’re true!!

Ironman, as we know, is pretty good in motivating you with just that three minutes video shown with loud music at the pasta party.

Your Coach has been playing a big part in helping you maintain that motivation. But now the main focus isn’t there. Now what? That’s done! And its business as usual. Training starts again. And that can be a challenge, for even the best out there.

First things First: Measurable goals

The first thing’s first. Go back to basics. What’s your why? Why do this? Why this race?

Peel back the layers and it all boils down to this: you signed because you want to be 1%better every day!

Setting new tangible goals and objectives is as important as being fit and strong.

Why? Measurable targets are actually great food for motivation. Motivation keeps you focused. Being focused leads to mental fitness.

Body and mind are working in synergy to lead to your best race, to the best race you can have that day.

“B” Race Targets Case Studies

For a beginner athlete (learning to train/training to learn) we are not going to talk about a time related target, but more about a skill related one. What do I mean with that?

In your previous race you have seen that you struggled to find the correct heart rate after the transition from the bike to the run (T2). It was advertised to stay in heart rate (HR) Zn3 from the beginning, but you ended in Zn4/5 instead and your run was miserable.

Your Coach is able to help you identify the root cause for that and tackle a plan to solve this issue. We know how much physiology is affected by the mechanics of the cycling transitioning into the run and how much, for example, a correct individual cadence both on the bike and on the run, can influence athlete’s performance.

The weeks leading to your “B” Race your training will focus not any more on long endurance workouts (you are aerobically fit already), but more on competition skills, executing more brick workouts, where you will gain more confidence on the dynamics and logistics of T2 itself. You will concentrate on not starting the run too hard in order to reach the HR target zone and build from that point. What we are going to measure in the coming race will be not only the time spent in transition area, but also the HR kept in the first 5/10 minutes of the run.

For an intermediate/advanced athlete (training to compete) it’s possible to talk about a time related target. What do I mean with that?

You know that your 5km run time is 20 minutes, but your sprint tri 5km run is 22 minutes. The quantifiable target is “improve my time in a sprint triathlon by reducing the time gap between run only and run in a triathlon competition”. This will be done by focusing on more tempo intervals in the weeks preceding the race inserting short, but intense brick workouts.

With these two case studies we can see that the beginner triathlete will measure his performance by analyzing the HR kept in the race, which led to a certain performance.

The intermediate on the other hand will have the unequivocal result of his time.

Note: Every race, every human is different every day. On race day weather could be different from previous year, it could be hot, it could be windy, your digestion could be messed up, maybe you didn’t sleep that much. These are all things that we cannot control.

Deal with things that you can control, things you trained for. Race the day you’re given.

Sometimes signing for a race with no guidance can lead to frustration. Maybe the time in life was not good, maybe the preparation from an open source internet plan was not enough for our expectations.

This is way is so important in triathlon have the help of an “outside” professional. Someone who is looking at you and is tailoring your training to your needs of glory and to your lifestyle.

This person is an expert in dealing not only with training plan, but also with athletes’ life drama.

This person is an expert in identifying with you new goals day by day and able to quantify your performance. This person is also able to look at your current training completely objectively, without the emotional investment the athlete has, and offer some guidance how to best tackle whats ahead.

This person is also able to trigger your motivation when you are bored and convinced that “IT CANNOT BE DONE”.

Yes YOU CAN!

Yes you can be 1%BETTER EVERY DAY.