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The Corner: Taking Stock of Your Last Season - Three things to Consider
By Justin Daerr
11/24/2009 |
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The offseason is a time for reflection and every year we get a chance to learn from our past season(s). Chances are, you probably only remember a few moments of the whole year. I once asked a friend of mine that has been training and racing for over ten years to recall his top five training memories. After three, he started to struggle.
We often remember most of our races and whether they went well or not, but sometimes everything in between becomes a little fuzzy. Right now is a great opportunity to look at your season collectively and determine where you can improve your efforts in the next one. As you look back, take the following into consideration:
What hindered consistency?
Unless you live a considerably uneventful life, you probably had something step in the way of you consistently training this year. It could be an isolated event that was particular to this year, but more often than not we can improve our consistency by making subtle changes.
Most people are limited with the time they have to train and even more limited with the time they have to sleep. Apparently having a family, job and training for three sports is time consuming. Yet, everyone gets distracted; particularly by TV, internet, twitter, reading this article, etc. Be sure that you are spending your time doing what you want to do and that it falls in line with the goals you set for yourself.
Did you design your season to cope with your psychology?
Most people want to succeed when they toe the line for their ‘A’ races, but achieving that requires a different path for all of us. What really made me think about this aspect of training was a conversation I had with a friend. This friend of mine raced much more often than I did and his reasoning was that “if he didn’t race, he wouldn’t rest.” This is a perfect example of someone understanding himself. If he didn’t race he would simply run himself into the ground. Racing, paradoxically, helped him recover.
What about you? Did you feel burned out this season? Overtrained? Undertrained? When did you feel you reached your mental peak and what led you there?
Proper Execution of LONG training
This is an interesting topic because I see problems on either end of the spectrum. On the one hand, you have athletes racing long that do not train at their race intensity (training is too easy). On the other hand, you have folks that are taking their long training too far and are cashed out on race day. How many times have you heard about athletes having their best ride three weeks out from their race?
One key concept to remember is this: training is never, ever racing. You only need to put everything together for one day: race day. Every other day (training) is a chance to prepare for moments of that day. Trying to put it altogether before race day defeats the purpose of actually racing.
Take the time to really reflect on the 2009 season; it will help make 2010 a successful one.
Enjoy the offseason,
j
Justin Daerr is an elite triathlete and coach. You find more JD at www.endurancecorner.com and www.justindaerr.com. He will be coaching at the Endurance Corner camps in Tucson (March) and Moab (May).
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