How to Prepare for the Triathlon Race Season
The race season is a time to prepare for racing. But how do we do that?
The following are the main items that you should be focusing on during the race season:
SPLIT YOUR TIME BETWEEN RACE INTENSITY AND RECOVERY
The race season is the time to ensure that you are ready to race, NOT to build additional fitness. Rather, you are spending your time getting race-ready. This is called peaking.
Peaking for an event is accomplished by achieving a balance between race intensity training and recovery. If your training leans more towards training at race intensity, you will fatigue quickly, fitness may actually drop, chances of injury increase, and you will find yourself unable to race well. Spend too much time recovering and you may actually lose fitness and under perform.
Striking the balance between race intensity and recovery is individual. Some athletes can get away preparing for a race with higher volume. Others may need quite a bit of recovery to be in the best form to race.
To figure out where your balance is, create an even 50-50 split between the two. 50% of your training sessions should be at race intensity, and the other half should be light, easy sessions, focusing on form or just simple movement. Note that this does not mean that 50% of your running or cycling is at threshold or race effort. It just means that if you are running 2 times a week, one of those sessions should include short, fast race-like efforts, and the other should be recovery or aerobic endurance based.
MASTER RACE SKILLS
Preparing for the specific skills that you will need during your race is extremely important, especially if you are trying to race to your full potential and are truly competitive against others. Many often think of triathlon as simply swimming, cycling and running, but there is much more to it than that.
Long distance triathletes must focus on some unique race skills, or their race day may quickly deteriorate. Solidifying and practicing race day nutrition and hydration during long training days is a much more important race-day skill to work on than transitions. However, short course or draft legal athletes must spend much more time working on transition skills.
Below is a list of race-skills that triathletes should spend time working on, depending on their primary racing focus:
Long Course (Full, Half, Ironman, 70.3 distances):
Hydration
Nutrition
Consuming fluids and food while in aero
Open water swimming skills such as sighting, cornering and drafting
Developing a race strategy
Running form off the bike
Short Course (Olympic, Sprint, Super Sprint distances):
Pre-race nutrition
Open water skills, such as sighting, cornering and swimming in a group
Transition practice
Wetsuit removal
Developing a race strategy
Running form off the bike
Draft Legal Racers (Olympic, Sprint, Mixed Team Relay):
Cycling skills such as cornering at high speeds, drafting, and riding in closer proximity to other riders
Transition skills, including mounting and dismounting
Closing the gap out of transition (the ability to catch the rider ahead of you right out of transition and get on their wheel)
Race start protocol (whether it be deep water, beach, pontoon, etc.)
Mental skills, such as pre-race visualization, distraction removal, information processing, decision making, etc.
Pre-race nutrition
Open water swimming skills such as sighting, drafting and cornering
Running fast and efficiently off the bike
Mixed team relay skills, such as team cohesion, relay ordering, etc.
Race-specific skills should be added into every training session. Some sessions during this phase may completely focus on one of the above skills. And others may include 3-5 minutes of race-specific skill work. There is a time and place for both.
SOLIDIFY AND MASTER RACE NUTRITION
By the time we enter the official race season our nutrition plans should be solidified. Making changes to one’s nutritional strategies can have negative affects on performance when done close to races. In fact, one of the cardinal rules of triathlon racing is to not try anything new on race day. This applies to nutrition. Your nutritional plan should be set and you should have practiced it and ensure that it works well for you over the past couple of months in the build phase.
STAY HEALTHY AND INJURY FREE
As has been mentioned before, being race-ready is a major goal of the race/maintenance phase of the season. Staying healthy and injury free will allow you to race well. This is a key focal point for the race season.
Imagine an athlete who has prepared over the past several months for their goal race. They have been smart with their training, and have prepared in a logical and scientific way. They have made the proper adaptations required to race their event well. Now imagine they have gotten all the way to the week of their event and rather than sticking with this intelligent and logical way of training they have abandoned that completely and have decided to stuff their face with unhealthy foods, continue to train at a high volume, abandon their sleep schedule, and avoid any recovery modalities at all. In this case, the highly prepared triathlete who has done everything right up to this point has essentially ruined their chance of a positive race performance.
Staying healthy and reducing the chance of injury is extremely important in the race season. You cannot win a race with healthy practices the week of an event, but you certainly can lose it!
INCLUDE MINI-RACE SIMULATIONS INTO YOUR TRAINING
A great way to include race-intensity work and develop race specific skills in your training is to include mini-race simulations into your week.
Not only does this help keep you primed to race from a physiological perspective, but you are also working on the skills and tactics of racing.
Mini-bricks are sets that include short bike intervals followed immediately by a mock transition and short, race-like run. A mini brick session will typically include several of these mini-brick race-like sets.
Setting up this session so that the transition is as close to the environment and scenario you will have on race day will help you really hone in on the skills required to make an effective move between disciplines. For example, mini brick sessions are incredible for training skills such as bike mounts and dismounts. You will also learn through trial and error in a training environment how your equipment should be laid out at transition, or how you can get your shoes on as quickly as possible. You don’t have to wait until race day to figure out which race-specific skills you need work on.
REST AND RECOVER COMPLETELY IN BETWEEN RACES AND RACE-LIKE TRAINING SESSIONS
For some triathletes (especially those in colder climates with a much shorter race season), they may have a number of events close together. It’s common here in Alberta Canada where I am to have 75% of the season’s races in the month of June. My development athletes race nearly every weekend in June, and so rest and recovery become extremely important during this time.
If you find yourself between a couple of races, ensure that you are taking advantage of light recovery sessions and rest in between events.
Not only is this important between races, but recovery should be taken seriously in between high intensity training sessions.
For example, let’s say a triathlete has a high intensity cycling session on Tuesday evening and a high intensity run session at the track planned for Thursday morning. Rather than piling on the intensity on Wednesday, and risking the chance of injury and burnout, the athlete should really be utilizing Wednesday as a recovery day. Things like massage, mobility, easy aerobic efforts and skill work should be the focus for that day.
Taking time to add in additional recovery modalities in between races and key training sessions is also important in staying injury free. Adding yoga sessions, massage therapy and easy recovery spins can help keep you recovered and ready to tackle future races and training.
REHEARSE AND REFINE TRANSITIONS
You’ll hear many triathletes mention that nutrition is the fourth discipline of triathlon. Well, they forget that there is already 4 disciplines of triathlon and that nutrition is actually the 5th. Don’t forget about transitions!
Many newcomers to the sport don’t realize the critical aspect that transition has in the performance within the sport. Yes, transition only constitutes a small fraction of the event. However, a long, rough transition can have a drastic impact on your bike or run.
Endurance sport is about getting into a rhythm and transitions do stand in the way of breaking up the consistency through the event. With this it does make sense to work on making the transition as smooth as possible.
As previously mentioned, mini bricks are a fantastic way to work on transition-specific skills. Athletes may even choose to include training in their week that focuses on transition alone. Transition work does not always have to be accompanied by cycling or running, but can be a complete training session in itself.
DO NOT ADD EXTRA TRAINING INTO YOUR PROGRAM FOR ANY REASON
Do not get pulled into feeling guilty for not staying on top of your training 100% of the time. The race season is not the time to try to gain fitness quickly before a race. You cannot cram for your event by adding extra training into your schedule.
Remember that the primary focus for the race season/maintenance phase is to 1) ensure that you are race ready, and 2) recover between events. Anything additional to this is a waster of time and will put your at an increased risk of injury. Not only will adding extra training into your race season/maintenance phase result in increased injury, but you will not perform anywhere close to where your fitness level should allow. In other words, you will not race as well. Cramming leads to worse performance. Cramming does not allow you to utilize all of your fitness as your body and brain will be overworked and fatigued.
TAPER FOR RACES
Each race should be preceded by a period of lighter volume and/or intensity of training. This is called a race taper.
The purpose of the taper is ensure that the athlete is race ready. This means that your form levels are high and that your fatigue levels are low. You have prepared your body to perform under fatigue and you’ve prepared yourself to mentally handle the difficulty of racing.
The process of getting race-ready may be different for everyone, and is highly dependent on your fitness levels and what your primary race is.
Athletes who are less experienced, or would consider themselves to be at a lower level of fitness can get away with a shorter taper. However, a minimum of a 4-7 day taper for a sprint or Olympic distance event and a minimum 7 days for a Half and 10 days for a Full distance triathlon should be followed. The following are ideal lengths for a taper based on the goal race:
SPRINT: 4-7 days
OLYMPIC/STANDARD: 7-10 days
HALF/70.3 DISTANCE: 7-14 days
FULL DISTANCE: 10-21 days
Taper properly for a race by dropping training volume by up to 50% by the end of the taper. A good rule of thumb is to drop volume by 25% for each week that you are tapering.
SET RACE PLANS AND COMMIT THEM TO MEMORY
Coming up with a race plan or strategy is really important. Especially the longer the event. Without a plan, a triathlete is at risk of bonking or hitting the wall, failing to finish, or setting an unrealistic goal for themselves.
The following are areas of your race plan that you want to plan ahead and, if possible, practice for the weeks leading up to your event.
Race Goal
Equipment
Race Strategies (such as pacing, skills reacting to competitors)
“What if” Scenarios
Nutrition and Hydration
Travel
Pre-Race Strategies
Post-Race Strategies
FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL
This emphasis for the race season/maintenance phase is a bit more difficult for many triathletes. Rather than focusing on a list of hard action items, this focal point is a huge mental battle. It’s often easier said than done.
There are many things that will pop up in the lead up to an event or race. Often these things will be in the last few weeks leading up to the race. A critical skill for an athlete to develop is to be able to focus on what they can control, and to let go of things they cannot control. Better yet, highly successful athletes (and individuals) are those who have learned to ADAPT to things they cannot control.
There is no shortage of things that may come up leading up to a race that you have absolutely no control over:
Being in a cycling accident that was not your fault
Dealing with sub optimal climate and weather
Your local pool closes down due to unforeseen circumstances
A family emergency pops up that completely changes your ability to train
An illness or injury unrelated to your training
No matter the unforeseen occurrence, it is important to keep an attitude of flexibility and adaptability. The earlier an athlete accepts and understands that things WILL come up that they cannot control, the quicker they will be able to pivot and make positive changes to their training or race plan.
ACCLIMATE, IF NEEDED
Acclimation is the process of getting used to a new climate. In triathlon, this usually involves an athlete implementing strategies to get the body accustomed to different temperatures or humidity levels ahead of an event. For professional triathletes, this process is a bit more simple from a logistical standpoint. For everyday triathletes who do not have the time to travel to a race venue weeks ahead of a race, they must get creative with their approach.
Some strategies to implement may include daily sauna visits, training during the hottest or most humid parts of the day, traveling to a race venue early, or even trying to simulate race conditions inside your own home.
While there may be some psychological benefit to getting in one or two of the above strategies periodically in your training, it has been shown that regular use of acclimation practices are of the greatest benefit to an athlete. Acclimation generally takes implementing acclimation sessions for 90 minutes daily for one to two weeks.
The following are some principles when implementing acclimation practices into your training:
Hyperthermic Conditioning:
This is typically done with the use of a sauna.
Beginning three weeks out of the event, an athlete should implement two to three 10-15 minute sauna sessions AFTER key training sessions.
This should start with lower exposure to the sauna and gradually increased until 2-3 days prior to the event.
Condition Fabrication:
This entails attempting to create race-like conditions within one’s home or training facility and training within those conditions.
An example is setting up a bike trainer in your laundry room with the doors closed, a fan blowing, and the dryer running.
Early Travel:
This involves traveling to a nearby location to the race venue ahead of the event and training in the location’s current environmental conditions.
If travel to the race venue is not possible, triathletes may opt to travel to a more logistically possible location with similar environmental conditions to the actual race venue. For example, an athlete who lives in a cold climate who is racing in Hawaii in October may have an easier time traveling to Florida the week before the event.
Condition Matching:
This means scheduling one’s training for a part of the day in which conditions will be most like the racing environment.
For example, racers preparing for an event in Mexico in the fall may decide that key sessions in the months leading up to their event are best done during the mid afternoon when conditions are hottest.