Last year brought a lot of firsts for me as a new triathlete. My first 10k race, first Olympic distance triathlon and my first 1st place finish. There were lessons learned with a fair amount of trial and error. Here are a few of my thoughts on 2019’s triumphs and what I need to work on going into 2020.
A full off season of training matters. Seems like a no brainer, before my first few races I justified lightening my training load as I got busy with … well, life. I thought I could get away without the long bike rides and long runs (keeping my longest training efforts at just under the relevant race distances). That meant I ended up walking during parts of my first few races and was really out of steam at the end of the bike portions.
Spending more time with hubby. One of the reasons I let him convenience me to do these races is that we are doing it together. That means we have a built in partner for training (especially those long rides), someone to go to races with and a never wavering cheering section. We push each other to preform better and stay on schedule with our training.
Strength training is important. I was disappointed at how slow any progress on the bike was for me. Upon review, I think there are two reasons for this. First, I was trying to focus on all three areas at the same time, instead of spending more time/energy on the one that was my weakest. Second, I wasn’t doing any strength training. It wasn’t until mid-season that I realized that many triathletes do strength training, but mostly in the off-season. Without building additional strength in my legs and with my training sessions not being as focused as they should have been, progress in this area was minimal as the season went on.
There are some great resources are out there - once you know where to look. I’m someone who generally likes to have all the facts before I jump into something new. Since hubby was already racing, I jumped into triathlons with just a few print outs I found after a quick search of how to train and his feedback/advice from his experiences. After getting into it a little more, I decided I needed to do more research because what I saw in those “standard” plans wasn’t working for me. I found three great resources that I found most helpful (1) Triathlon Taren, (2) Global Triathlon Network ("GTN") and (3) Endure IQ. With the combination of these three resources, I’ve been able to pull together a much more comprehensive training and nutrition plan for 2020, and mentally I already feel that I am in a better place to start this season.
Diet matters … if you want to be competitive. Growing up with two athletic siblings (both more naturally athletically gifted than me), I was always competitive. So to do these races and not try to do my best isn’t something that’s in my blood. I’m not someone who is content to just finish the task at hand - I like to compete. However, I found that my “mom” diet (i.e. eating the kiddos leftovers or snacking on whatever snack food I had in the house for them) wasn’t helping my performances. When I started to record what I ate, looked at it side-by-side with the results of training sessions and honestly reflected on how I felt, I noticed that after eating certain foods my training (or racing) wasn’t where I wanted it to be.
Performance Review. In my opinion, the only way to improve is to objectively look back at what I did and figure out where I made mistakes and work to fix those going forward.
- Swim. I've always loved swimming, and it showed as I felt good during the swim portion of races (also the first part). While you can't compare one race to another, my times improved over the season and I gained confidence swimming in the open water. There likely isn't a lot of room for me to improve, but in 2020 I will continue to work on my technique as well as increasing my stroke rate and overall endurance.
- Bike. This is my weakness, which stinks because as race distances get longer, it's a larger percentage of the overall race. This will be my focus in 2020 - building bike strength, completing the right workouts (vs "joy" riding) and making sure I am doing the long rides.
- Run. Aside from my 20 year old knee injury surfacing from time-to-time, my running did improve over the season (despite not quite learning how to go out easy instead of hard). After years and years of running and running related sports, for my body this is more about building the aerobic capacity as muscle memory seems to take over once I get out there. More work in Zone 2 will be beneficial to assisting this (along with strength training and replacing a run session a week with an extra swim session).
We are looking forward to our 2020 season and continuing to share our journey with everyone.
Happy New Year!
Working Mother Triathlete
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