How should you categorise your races through the season?
Athletes often categorise their races. In this article, Coach Philip outlines how athletes can use a category to help adjust their mindsets before the event.
The standard terminology for this is A-Race, B-Race, or C-Race. A-races are the peak single event or maybe two in the season, whereas C-races are considered part of the training cycle. For different athletes, different races may form the hierarchy. For example, for some, a 70.3 may be their A-race and require peak training; for others, it could just be part of the training weekend.
There is an additional layer, though. Athletes can begin to focus on the objectives of the event in question. Commonly labelling them sometimes doesn’t focus the mind enough: they are still races!
It may be better to consider races differently. Are you looking to experience, explore, or excel in the event? This can totally change your outlook for the day.
Experience
Experiencing an event is an eloquent way to outline the aims for it. If it is your first race, marathon or IRONMAN, the main objective will be to experience it. The athlete can learn from the event and understand the demands by being in the moment. This also provides further insight into the training requirements and how your body responds to the stress. It also allows you to learn from equipment items, nutrition, what works well for you, and little event nuances that may impact your performance. Think about the first time you tried anything; if you had your turn again, you would have done better just because you had the experience.
Exploration
Once you have experienced an event, you can explore how to improve your performance. Therefore, we can use the title of an exploration race to understand that the race has a clear purpose. Athletes will have several different areas they could explore in a race. It may be a strategy: pacing, nutrition, race craft, or it may be to challenge a developmental area, looking at racing a hillier or hotter location to inform your primary race of the season or the following year.
Excelling at a race
Most athletes take this approach to race at most events. They tend to aim to perform to their best. However, without the experience or the knowledge that their strategy is sound, excelling becomes more down to chance than deliberate practice.
Excelling at an event means there was nothing else you could do to deliver your best. Often, athletes need clarification and assume that the race’s outcome is the same as the input. Sure, racing for the win may define excellence; however, if you are after perpetual improvement, you must deliver your best, not just good enough to beat others on the day. Focussing on excelling at a race outlines a different preparation ahead of the race and a different mindset during it.
So, for your next race, decide: are you experiencing, exploring or excelling at this race?
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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