How to prepare (in)effectively for your next ‘A’ race
As the Triathlon season in the UK ends, it’s time to think about your goals for 2023 and how you can best prepare for them. In this tongue-in-cheek article, Coach Denise looks at just how you can do this to maximum effect, maybe.
The following examples are genuine conversations we have had with athletes or overheard in discussions about planning for the next season, we have certainly paraphrased them to exaggerate their points, but the principles are the same. Look through these and see if any of them resonate either with you or perhaps with your training buddies. Sometimes seeing something written down makes it easier to see the wood for the trees!
Since 2023 is a new year, it makes no sense to consider how 2022 went, what went well and what you could have done better. After all, it’s in the past, and we want to consider the future. Best to just pick a race with a great-sounding name and not worry about what the route is like, how hard or easy it might be and how it compares with other events you’ve done. That’s just wasted time.
·Since triathlon is all about competition, knowing as much as possible about how professional triathletes are training has got to be a great idea. Make sure you follow as many pro triathletes as possible on as many social media channels as possible. This way, you’ll know exactly what they are doing, and you can match it. Of course, they don’t have a day job or commuting to worry about, but surely you can still cover their training schedule.
On a similar topic, it’s a great idea to be constantly comparing your own performance to other triathletes, either professional or in the club. So what if you’re a 45-year-old woman, and the comparison is with a 25-year-old man? You’re all racing the same course, right?
Social media is definitely your friend. If you can follow as many athletes as possible, you’ll know their training patterns and be able to see how you compare. Yes, most people only post the good sessions, but it’s only by knowing how they are doing that you can really get a feel for how much work you still have to do. It might put the stress levels up a bit, but you need to be able to handle pressure anyway.
At the same time, make sure you’ve spoken in depth to everyone you know who has ever done a tri and get their advice, then try to follow it all. If it worked for them, it’ll work for you, obviously.
Setting goals makes sense, so getting your best CSS pace and using this to determine your swim pace for the race makes perfect sense. In fact, you’ll be wearing neoprene probably, and there are no walls, so knock a few seconds off the pace to make it more accurate.
For the bike, look at the fastest ride you did with the club or a group, and use that group pace for your speed goal in the race. Sure, you won’t be drafting (in most races), but once the race day adrenaline kicks in, that will cover the difference. After all, it’s only a law of physics you are trying to break here.
Similarly, look at your fastest ever 5km pace for the run and use this as the expected pace for the day, especially if you are racing middle or long distance. In fact, if you are doing a sprint, it makes more sense to look at your best 1km rep pace for the benchmark.Overall, setting your goals is best done by comparing them to others. It is a race so getting faster times in every stage than last year’s winner is the only way to win. Yes, those look like challenging goals, but that’s what it’s all about.
Transition is such a short part of the event that spending any time practising it, or even thinking about it, is time that is not spent training. Don’t bother; it’ll all be obvious on the day – how hard can it be? Of course, you might forget to have something in transition, but that’s just part of the fun of race day.
As anything can happen on race day, and probably will, there is no point in thinking about what could go wrong and how to mitigate it. Fixing punctures or putting chains back on can’t be that difficult; no need to practice it; you’ve seen it done before.
There is no point in looking at race routes and profiles, especially for the bike and run. It is what it is; why will knowing where the hills are and how steep up or down they are help at all?
Nutrition is for wimps, especially in training. The main goal is to be lean and mean, so developing a nutrition plan for general eating and one for training and racing is just more wasted time which could be spent training.
·And finally, training is never fun. This is a serious business, especially for the A race. All sessions need to be hard to drive towards that goal. Taking easy weeks will just detract from getting better. Sure, you might be feeling a bit tired; keep getting bugs, and sessions are getting harder, but that’s all part of the training process—no gain without pain.
Good luck for 2023 if you follow this advice. If you’d rather take a more considered, professional approach to your training, look at some of the more specific Tri Training Harder blogs on training approach, race strategy, nutrition and a specific race review. Equally, if you are finding it difficult to process an off-season, or how to build up properly from a winter out of structured training, check out this helpful list of blogs.
Denise has been coaching triathletes since 2019 as a coach at her local triathlon club in West Lothian. Between 2019 and 2022, Denise was the Head coach in the club, working with a team of coaches to support and develop triathletes with a wide range of capabilities, completing her BTF Triathlon Level 2 coaching qualification in 2021.
Denise joined Tri Training Harder as a coach in 2021, building on the qualifications through the experience and knowledge passed on by the coaching team.
In 2019 Denise set up and continues to run her own Jog Scotland running group, a mixed ability group of runners who meet weekly. This delivers on her passion for helping people to do much more than they think they can.
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