By Steen Rose.
| Race 1 – 8th AG
Swim – 21st Bike – 2nd Run – 6th T1 – 14th T2 – 12th |
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Here are two race results for a certain athlete. The 1st race was at the start of the year, the 2nd at the end. The last race had a much larger, more competitive field, so although the result is the same, it’s more impressive and shows improvement over the course of the season .
The off-season is a great time to focus on improving an athlete’s weaknesses. It’s very difficult to make significant gains in any one area without a significant focus on that area. With a race coming up, it’s necessary to stay sharp in all three disciplines, but during the winter we can afford to put one or even two disciplines into maintenance mode.
Using the above results as a case study, where would you suggest this athlete place his or her focus this winter?
More importantly, where should you put your focus this winter? Are you analyzing your results like this? Is your coach? If not, why not?
There’s actually a lot of information missing here. How much time is the athlete giving up in each part of the race? What is the athlete’s history in each discipline? What challenges and opportunities does the athlete have with regard to time, weather, and equipment?
If you’re following along at home, making notes (and you should be!) I’ll give you the first answer. Transitions. We can all improve our T-times. It’s simple, free, easy, and even fun if you do it right.
That leaves S-B-R. Rank-order the three disciplines with 1 being the weakest, and 3 being the strongest. Bingo, you now have a priority list for your focus this winter. However, before you start writing your training plan, make sure that your life will allow you to commit to that focus. If swimming is your #1 priority, but you can only make it to the pool once a week, you’re either going to need to buy a VASA Trainer or put your focus somewhere else.
Likewise, if you live in northern Missouri and hate riding the trainer, winter might not be the time to focus on improving your cycling, no matter how bad it may be.
The next thing to consider is your current training schedule. If your running needs improvement, and you’re currently only running 3 days a week, your focus block is going to look much different than if you’re already running 5 days a week.
In general, each focus block should be 10-14 days, and include 7-12 days of the focus activity, probably including two-a-days. The actual nuts and bolts of what this should look like is going to vary from person to person. You’ll need to decide this for yourself, and I’d recommend enlisting the aid of an experienced coach. Even if you don’t want a full-time coach, consider doing a consult, for about the cost of a new bike tire you can get expert advice and maximize your training time this winter.
Steen Rose is the owner and Head Coach of Athletes On Track and an Elite Coach for Training Bible Coaching. He has been competing in cycling and multisport events for 16 years with 13 state titles and 3 national medals to his name. He has been coaching since 2003 and works with all ages and abilities of athletes locally, nationally, and abroad. He can be reached at srose@trainingbible.com
Great article Steen!
What I also like to do to analyse athlete’s performance at the end of a season is looking at the differentials of time between the athlete’s performance and a certain position (fastest split or podium). It’s also interesting to calculate the % of the best split in every discipline as well as in the transitions. It gives an idea how much improvement is needed to achieve specific goals.
To do that kind of analysis, I suggest the use of a spread sheet on excel.
Merci for your comment, Vincent.
I have many spreadsheets just like you are talking about. It helps to know not only how to train for the race, but how to approach it mentally.