Training is easy. You feel great when you get your endorphin boost, you can control your environment (or select your terrain), there is no pressure because no one is watching or tracking you and you know that if a workout doesn't go as planned, you always have tomorrow to try again.
On the other hand, race day is stressful! Feeling pressure to perform - especially in an unfamiliar and/or uncontrolled environment - brings anxiety, nerves and expectations. It's easy to compare yourself to other athletes and experience a heightened fear of failure. Never in training do you feel what you feel on race day. Far too many athletes complain that they can train better than they race - finishing a race feeling like they underperformed, relating back to all the amazingly great workouts that they crushed, yet feel defeated as to why they were unable to perform on race day, despite feeling so prepared.
On the other hand, race day is stressful! Feeling pressure to perform - especially in an unfamiliar and/or uncontrolled environment - brings anxiety, nerves and expectations. It's easy to compare yourself to other athletes and experience a heightened fear of failure. Never in training do you feel what you feel on race day. Far too many athletes complain that they can train better than they race - finishing a race feeling like they underperformed, relating back to all the amazingly great workouts that they crushed, yet feel defeated as to why they were unable to perform on race day, despite feeling so prepared.
One of the great challenges for triathletes is translating training into a great race day result. Despite feeling overly confident in training, it's important to master the necessary confidence, physical skills, nutrition readiness and mental strength for race day.
Competing like you train seems like an obvious strategy but a better approach is to train like you want to compete.
If you think about all that you (try to) do on race week/day in order to set yourself up for success, why not put that same focus, energy and attention to detail into training?
Competing like you train seems like an obvious strategy but a better approach is to train like you want to compete.
If you think about all that you (try to) do on race week/day in order to set yourself up for success, why not put that same focus, energy and attention to detail into training?
- Restful sleep
- Organized and planned diet
- Good mobility
- Planning, focus,, oganization and time-management
- Relaxation and visualization/meditation
- Good warm-ups
- Proper fueling
- Great daily hydration
- Reviewing the course maps
- Staying in the moment
- Rehearsing pacing/strategy/execution
- Ensuring gear/equipment is in great condition
- Fine-tuning sport nutrition
It seems obvious that if you are going to do something on race day, you should repeatedly do it in training - far too often is this not the case. Rushed and busy schedules, poor planning and lack of application causes athletes to lack confidence for race day.
If you want to perform well on race day (who doesn't?) it is important that you nail the small (yet very important) components in training.
For example, this means practicing your pre race and race day nutrition many times in training to ensure confidence for race day. The purpose of training is to build physical and mental skills, habits and strategies that will translate into an optimal performance by your body on race day. Sadly, many athlete get really good at performing workouts underfueled and undernourished and expect to put together a fail-proof pre-race and race day fueling and hydration strategy. I think of this like riding a bike - if you are always riding with poor bike handling skills, you can't expect to master bike handling skills on race day, just because it's race day. The same is true for nutrition. If you are putting together a complex, detailed and precise diet and fueling/hydration strategy for the 48 hours before a race and for race day, but you never practice this approach in training (repeatedly), you've been training half prepared but you are expected to compete 100% prepared. Unfortunately, success doesn't happen this way. You must give 100% to your training if you want to compete well on race day.
The more you treat your training decisions like it's race week/race day, the easier you will find it to perform at your highest level when it counts. Simply put, don't do anything drastic on race week/day that you didn't practice in training.
The more you treat your training decisions like it's race week/race day, the easier you will find it to perform at your highest level when it counts. Simply put, don't do anything drastic on race week/day that you didn't practice in training.