Planning your race season

 How to plan your season

I know you want to sign up for races, they're cheaper now and you're anxious to set your goals so you can start training to them. Before you go crazy and sign up for a lot of races, do a few things to help yourself set up a successful plan.  When you've read this blog, come back for the discounts on BlackTriday


1. Last year review  Review your race results from this year.  What went well?  Did you have some PRs?  What do you need to work on most?  Did your season go well?  Were races too closely spaced?  Were they too widely spaced?  Keep these issues in mind as you plan.  For example, if your swim is slow, you might want to include a swim focused event in your training.  That will force you to focus on the swim to prepare for the event and give you some practice at swimming hard during an event.  Or you might want to include a Century Ride to prepare for the longer bike course or a half or full marathon to work on running.  Or you might want to focus on weights, HIIT, yoga, pilates early on to improve flexibility and strength. 

2. Budget Review your budget.  Set a $ figure for your races.  Include travel, bike shipping fees and accommodations as well as race fees.  Add 15% to be sure you have enough. 

3. ABC Ranking  Choose your A race.  Some really ambitious folks might choose two A races, but I suggest you make a single selection for an A race.
 Here are the criteria
  A  most important race, the one where you want to do well and possibly PR or qualify for nationals or worlds.  OR the first time you do this distance. 
B Challenging races that you want to do well at but are using for training to the A race.  Or a race you've always wanted to do in a locale that is new or special to you.  Or a race where friends will be there to cheer you.  This is a race that could be an A race but isn't. 
C Training races, distances you have done before, or shorter distances that keep you fit and work into your training plan well.  Training races can include swim events, running events, aquabikes, duathlons, etc to focus on a specific training area. 

4. Your Plan Set up a calendar in excel so you can see the whole season at once.  I use weeks on the first column and days across the top.  I include a column for race name and color A races red, B races Yellow and C races blue.  I include a column for the race link and a column yes/no to indicate I have registered for the race.  Saving the link is really helpful when you are getting ready to go.  You have immediate location for the athlete guide, race schedule and you can check the courses as you plan your training. 

5. Packaged Plans  Download or enter a prepared plan on another worksheet.  Using a prepared race training plan is tricky.  They are often developed for a single race day.  If you have multiple race days, you need to plan for those races with taper weeks if needed, recovery weeks and spacing the races to coincide with the peaks and recovery weeks of the program.  If they don't you have to adjust the training to work for your racing plans.  As a coach, I'm trained to work on those issues.  I can spot the problems with a training plan pretty quickly.  As a novice, you may, and most likely will, set up a very aggressive plan with minimal rest that will take you into your A race overtrained and fatigued.  It's not a criticism, it's the effect of human optimism.  It's called optimism bias.  A coach can help you keep your training plan realistic. 

6. The Plan After you have plugged in your races on the days in your worksheet, start cutting and pasting the training plan into your worksheet one week at a time.  Check the goal of the week's training.  Is it Build?  Recovery?  Taper?  Peak?  Do the demands of the race in that week support the goal of the training plan or are they opposed?  If you have a fast Sprint planned with a BUILD, that would work better than a RECOVERY week.  The link is to Training Peaks which is a great way to build your training plan.  They include helpful hints like considering geography and the likely weather for races since that can have an effect on your race and your recovery. 

7.  Register for races  Once you are satisfied with your plan, use the links in your spreadsheet to go register for those races feeling confident you have built a training plan designed to succeed.  I like to also get hotel, flight, and car reservations at the same time and load then onto my racing/training spreadsheet.  That way I have everything in one location. 

8. Put it all on your calendar, with reminders!  I use my google calendar and google docs for everything.  I put my races on my calendar and put a reminder at least 2 weeks ahead so I'm reminded about any B and C races well in advance.  Yes, you're using your plan but I find those races can get forgotten since I'm just looking at my daily training plan and not that far ahead when life gets complicated.  I also load any hotel, car, flight and race links into the notes for that race onto that calendar entry.  That way I don't have to get to google docs, it's all there.  It's very helpful when you arrive at the hotel and they ask for confirmation numbers. 

9. Do the plan!  Now you have a plan and you can relax and just train, knowing you will be ready for each race if you execute the plan.  I advise having a coach to keep you accountable and to help you make mid-course corrections since there are times when a great plan can get disrupted and you'll need to adjust.  Illness, work travel or stress, family crises, over training by going too hard when you feel great...it all can cause adjustments to be required. 

10.  A note for older athletes  Typical training plans are for 20-40 yo racers.  You may want to include an extra recovery day or week for larger, longer races than what is recommended in the training plan.  You may want to more slowly build on the training hours each week than what is recommended.  For even the fittest athletes, a 10-15% increase per week is recommended.  Advancing too fast can cause shin splints and stress fractures.  Make sure you include weight training throughout the whole season.  Even 10-15 minutes is better than none.  The reason is that endurance training does not provide pressure on the bones to keep bone density and muscle tone on older athletes.  Younger athletes are not losing muscle tone and bone density as quickly as older athletes and can eliminate weight/strength training toward the major race.  But after 2-3 days, the losses begin to affect your fitness.   Stop weight/strength training 2-3 days prior to your races to avoid DOMS during the race. (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness).