How to review your 2020 'season'?
With 2020 being such a peculiar year – the word “unprecedented” must be the most over-used word – we reach the time when we need to reflect on what our 2020 race season, but we find there is a slight gap from what we are used to doing in ‘normal times’. Coach Alan writes on how we can look to review the 2020 ‘season’.
It’s that time of year again when we perhaps already should have completed a season review but this year it seems inappropriate to write such a blog but training for events is a process of plan, do, review. This plan will always include some degree of repetition and this can become increasingly so as athletes and coaches hone in on what works well.
But in 2020 we had a change of plan enforced upon us as Covid-19 had other ideas.
Normally a session review would focus upon
What were your goals? Did they work well, were they realistic?
Did you achieve these goals?
How did the plan pan out, what events perhaps affected the plan and how did you respond to these?
What went well this year?
What would have been even better if this year?
In answering these questions an athlete and coach will go through the process of flicking back through the timeline of the season to reflect upon and record comment upon what happened. However, this year most reviews fail at point two and it is point three that is interesting: how did you respond to the events that affected this year?
You may have responded in one of the following ways;
Persevere and readjust the timeline of your plan
Reduce or simplify your training
Step back from triathlon training
Focus on a single sport or duel discipline focus
Or another way entirely, but how you responded likely tells you something about yourself as an athlete how important is training for and racing triathlons to you, how important is the or a sport to you, how important is any level of competition to you? All of these questions tell us something about your motivation orientation and depth of motivation. It perhaps also tells us something about your degree of pragmatism and your ability to switch focus.
Secondly, you can look at what you did do?
What did you learn about yourself from this enforced break and change in plan?
How did any gap in swimming leave you upon return to the water?
And finally, as part of 2020 what didn’t you do?
What did you miss?
What didn’t you miss?
What did you think might affect you but in reality, it didn’t at all?
What things that affected you did you find surprising?
All in all 2020 hasn’t been a wasted year for anybody. Learning isn’t knowledge, it is in our experiences and reflections where we grow and learn, where we take what we think we know and apply it to a situation. True learning happens once you step away from a book and into the real world. What did you learn this year?
If any year has taught us a lot, its this one and I for one, can’t wait for 2021 race day. I’m already practicing my game face ;)
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