Welcome to the Training Tips homepage for all 2022 Castle Triathlon Series events. The Top Tips on this page are suitable for competitors who have recently completed their event.
Using our extensive experience coaching athletes of all levels of ability we have put together our top training tips for novice, intermediate and advanced levels of athletes.
As always, if you have any questions regarding training or racing then please don’t hesitate to get in touch and arrange a free coaching consultation with one of our professional coaches.
Select your level below to be taken to the most appropriate training tips for you:
Congratulations
Congratulations on the successful completion of your first event! Look back with fond memories of your first experience and smile, thinking about the medal you earned. It is easy to move on to “what is next” without pausing to celebrate.
“What next?” can wait, but eventually, it will need to be answered. We suggest waiting until at least a week before choosing your next goal, as this means you can enjoy your current success. More than likely, you have started to ignite a spark that will challenge you to become a stronger, better version of yourself: welcome to the club!
If you enjoyed your journey with us this time, we hope to help on your next steps into endurance: just be in touch.
Congratulations – how do you review your race?
Congratulations on completing your race. You have certainly made strides forwards in your preparation for this event, and it is easy to start dissecting your experiences. Firstly, enjoy that finish-line feeling, then, and only then, can you start considering what you would like to achieve if you had another go. Perhaps it is getting into the top 50% of the field; maybe you were almost on the age-group podium; perhaps, you almost made the course record. Once you know what you want to do next, it is time to consider how to make that step up. Have a look over how you did in the race and the build-up in training, and think about what went well and what you could have done better. Often a great way of looking at making that next step in performance is to consider how you could improve by 1% in all of the race? Write down a list – this will be the basis of your training plan for next year:
Warm-up
Race start
Different disciplines (multi-sport athletes)
Pacing
Psychology
Nutrition
Cool Down
You can also similarly review the season – what could you improve by 1%? Often these conversations are completed really well with a coach who can help you consider objectively how to improve in these areas. Our guess is just writing down that list above will give you an opportunity for more than 1% improvement.
With this all in mind, if you want some help to create the ideal plan for you, just be in touch; we have a team of coaches ready to help you out.
Congratulations – How do you review a race?
It is easy to skip over the elation of the finish line at the sharp end, so do take a moment to recognise how that finish line is the conclusion of a lot of hard work and perseverance and almost certainly teamwork. Your support team will be behind you all the more for the next one if you thank them for their input (partner, children, physio etc.). We hope you got out of the event what you wanted to; that said, we are yet to meet an athlete who had a perfect race.
With this in mind, take some time to reflect on how your event went and where the gaps were between yourself and where you would like to be. As a coach, this is the most fun part of the analysis: how will we close that gap? It may be that now is the time to turn to full coaching support as they can make a measurable difference in getting closer to your goals – check out some of our athletes’ comments here.
When you look at your race, the most important thing to do is to keep it objective. It is unlikely that you deliberately did not go as hard as you felt you could, so don’t pretend that you didn’t push or anything like that. Use objective measurements to track what happened. Metrics from devices, comparing performance to your race plan and reverse engineering race files are excellent ways to get to grips with what happened. In the tips above, we talk about 1% improvements. If you know what your gap was in performance and dream, then start working out how to get closer to that, what you need to do and start writing a plan to get there. This is the exciting part of endurance training and racing – the constant strive for better.