With the offseason officially ending tomorrow, now is the perfect time to look back at 2013 and review the year. They say you learn just as much from your mistakes, so with that I'm interested in what didn't work as well as what did.
As a self coached athlete, I don't have the luxury of someone else pulling the strings or providing the insight. I have to learn on the job. This is both a blessing and a curse. The insights are mine to uncover and learn from, but I have to have my eyes open. It is way too easy to settle into a training plan that fails to provide sufficient challenges or training stress. As Gordo always says: "most athletes do what they want, successful athletes do what it takes".
Simply put, 2013 was a great year. The most successful of my 6 year 'career' by far.
15 races, 5 AG wins, 12 top 10's and 4 overall wins was a marked improvement on 2012. I improved physically across all three sports but most importantly I improved mentally at every race I lined up at. I carried a completely different mindset into the season and this only grew as the months progressed. I'll spare the details for a separate post but I'm convinced this mindset was a key difference between 2012 and 2013.
Looking at the numbers what stands out is a consistent level of training throughout the year - even with a heavy race schedule.
January through to April saw a consistent number of hours with March showing an increase due to a training camp in Mallorca. May dipped as I took a taper week and post race recovery week from Mallorca 70.3. June and July also included taper weeks into the European Sprint champs and British Standard champs respectively. I managed an uninterrupted month in August prior to the taper for the world champs in September but never really managed to get going again prior to Phuket in November.
Being honest, I had one eye on the offseason during the buildup and I found it hard to get into a consistent groove. The diary details show that I still did the majority of my race specific sessions however - something that no doubt 'saved' my race.
Plenty of positive lessons learned then - here are my top 3:
1. Long seasons require multiple midseason 'reboots' - I knew I would be racing from March to November and as such I made sure that after each A race, I would have a week of minimal training to reset my mind. Physically I knew I could handle the tiredness from such a long season (and in the end my body held up relatively well) but I was concerned with my mental state. Emotional endurance is something we often take for granted as the season kicks off, but it needs to be trained and managed with as much care as the physical side. If anything I could have added a more significant break this year as in the buildup to Phuket I struggled mentally. My schedule for 2014 includes a race in October (Challenge Paguera in Mallorca) so I need to make sure I place increased emphasis on my emotional endurance.
2. Race specific training is vital - obvious I know, but when I talk about race specific, I mean completely specific. For example in the buildup to Phuket, I studied the bike course, the climbs, the gradients and the downhills. I then created a turbo session that mimicked (as much as possible) the bike route with the different intensities, inclines and nutrition I would use on race day. During the session itself I would constantly visualise the road, the scenery, the heat and the competition. I imagined scenarios of leading the race, riding in a pack, riding solo, getting a puncture, getting a penalty. I completely prepared myself for the demands of the course so that on race day I would know I had the physical and mental tools to get the job done. Same for the swim and run. This is something I will now do for all my A races in 2014
3. Consistency is key - again, pretty obvious but so easily ignored. My plan was simple when I started training in January. I would commit to a specific amount of training per week, do that for three weeks, have a 'lighter' week and then do it all over again. No questions and no excuses. This created some strange (questionable?) situations where I would have to complete crazy weekend warrior training to make up my numbers if my week had been busy - physically not ideal, but mentally very important. Creating and committing to a simple 'base' week that formed the core of my training plan allowed me to prevent any 'paralysis by analysis' (a constant danger for self coached athletes) and focus on the next session. Get the work done first - then start thinking about it!
So what about the mistakes? What parts of last season didn't work at all? What can I change to make 2014 even more successful. A quick look at the training data shows I made plenty of mistakes - some of them proper howlers that make me wonder what the hell I was thinking. This is great news as some simple corrections could make a big difference to my racing in 2014. I'll outline these and my goals for 2014 in my next post.
Thanks for reading!
Rob
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