Highs/Lows of a Successful Season; 2013 Plan

"There are periods to focus, and periods to let loose a bit. Many times its the periods you let loose that motivate you to focus"

Heading home from Las Vegas I had time to reflect upon a very exciting/long race season & a busy summer.  Looking at the positives, I had a chance to travel down to Florida in May to race against Lance Armstrong, Syracuse/Montauk in June, & head out West to Las Vegas to participate in a World Championship race, while completing my 1st Ironman in my own backyard in August.   On top of all the races, there were countless weddings/bachelor parties(Puerto Rico/NYC) that were in the mix & also a visit to Arizona to see my nephew.  Balancing all these activites takes planning & one thing I needed to focus on in 2012 was making other activities (outside of triathlon) just as much a top priority, even though I was putting more time into training.  Understanding that it was ok to take a day off here in there from training & my schedule had to be flexible in order to make everything work in my life.  I did the best I could from this standpoint, but I am still learning this balance as it is the most important aspect of being able to train. 

2012 Accomplishment Review:

-Syracuse 70.3: This target race was executed as good as it could after a Puerto Rico bachelor party.  At this time, my mind was calm & positive, I was strong, my fitness/health were peaking and I showed I belong with the best in my age group in Syracuse.  I swam the best I ever had (29:09), biked a solid 2:30 on hilly course, & finished with a 1:30 run, which was the hardest half marathon course I had ever ran in all 7 Half Ironman races over the course of 3 years.  I finished Overall 45/1045 & 6th of 112 in my age group qualifying me for the World Championships in Las Vegas.

-Mighty Montauk Triathlon:  Two weeks before Syracuse, despite a horrible swim start, I finished with the 2nd fastest Run split @ Mighty Montauk Olympic Triathlon (38:16) against a stacked olympic distance field finishing 7th of 526.  I had never felt so good running a hilly 10k before averaging just around 6:10 per mile while proving my bike speed was getting faster keeping up with the top group.  My goal is to go well below 6 minute miles next year for the 10k.

- Florida 70.3:  Showed I can run just as good as most amateurs (1:27: 3rd fastest run split) in the 90 degree heat, while realizing there is still room for huge improvements.  Age Group: 7/176   Overall: 51/1773

With all these positive moments, I still think about my struggles and where I went wrong towards the end of the season.  I picked up Lava Magazine on my flight home & had a chance to read Matt Dixon's( Pro Triathlete Coach) article about body/mind recovery to gain strength through mid-season rests.

Matt Dixon-  "I have seen many cases where athletes preparing for the final key races of their season were just desperate for it to be over.  They were carrying fatigue, injury & mental exhaustion to the starting line, and had created barriers to achieving their best results.  This is often a result of being unwilling to take a little step back earlier in the season to allow a little rejuvenation and respite.  These athletes end up with massive loss of fitness and negative changes to body composition and health."

Going into a race,(especially of a 70.3 or 140.6 distance) the amount of energy you need not just phsically, but mentally is huge!  Concentrating and keeping pace for 4-5 hours requires a very positive/strong mental state mind.   Right before the gun goes off on raceday you know there is an extremely long day ahead of you that will take 100% of your concentration to do well.  You may be relaxed and confident in your capabilities or you could have a bunch of negative thoughts swirling through your head.  Positive energy is needed to do well at any event and if your mind is focused on negative thoughts, then you will get negative results.  This same theory goes for mostly any sport, but especially for individual sports such as MMA & most of the olympic events you see.  If you have a bad day there is no teammate to pick you up.   Once your mind wanders, it can force you out of your current state, resulting in a downhill spiral of negative thoughts.  If your swimming, swim in the moment until you get on the bike.  When your working hard on the bike, keep focus on that specific mile & don't let your mind get ahead to the run.  Going into a race healthy (mentally positive, excited, phsyically strong) will help you stay away from these negative pitfalls. 

This is an piece of an article by Jesse Kropelnicki (Pro Triathlete/Coach) on a Mentally Unfit Athlete vs Mentally Fit Athlete:

"Task relevance considers an athlete’s mindset while training and/or racing.  Athletes who are able to focus their full attention on task relevant items, be they training or racing, are constantly reminding themselves of things such as “I will stay focused on the bike, and peddle at 90rpm” and “I will run this hill strong, keeping my eyes on my target”.  These are signs of a mentally fit athlete because, despite any outside distractions, they are able to concentrate only on the task at hand.

"Conversely, the mentally unfit athlete tends to get distracted by outside stimuli, thus focusing on task- irrelevant items. Thoughts that fall along the lines of “If I don’t perform well, I am going to disappoint my family and friends,” and “If I don’t place in the top-10, my sponsors are going to drop me.” The difference in mindsets is quite clear, and it’s not too difficult to see the impacts of each. While a focus on task-relevant items will not necessary lead to physical success, it will certainly put the athlete in a position to fully capitalize on their fitness. By the same token, the toll of focusing on task-irrelevant items can take the wind right out of an athlete’s fitness sails with too much mental energy spent on why something can’t be done rather than why it can."

Mental exhaustion was the barrier I created to limit me from achieving top results in Vegas.    I didn't have time to give my body a mid-season rest it needed, since right after the Syracuse 70.3 I had 6 weeks until the full Ironman.  Right after IMNY I had 4 weeks until Vegas.  I had lost that motivation & drive that had given me a chance to race as good as I did in Syracuse.  The mentally-fit attitude I brought to Syracuse, which tells me I am going to hold "x pace" for 13.1 miles & do everything I can to hold it was gone.  This slowly brought on my mentally-unfit attitude, when one minor thing went wrong during a race I panicked & easily convinced myself to slow down.  With loss of motivation and mental exhaustion came some weight gain.  I had gained about 5-7 pounds from 155 to 160 going into Las Vegas.  My workouts weren't as satisfying.  My speed was ok, but I had trouble focusing on my long weekend workouts.  I even was hoping for a flat tire 5 miles into the Vegas bike course to use as an excuse for not finished or doing well.

At the end of the day, you should be excited to race and train! If your a triathlete looking to add races and more volume to next year, I would recommend to plan at least a 2-3 week mid- season rest while incorporating some lighter training to rest your body/mind.  Raceday should be thought of as a bonus to training where you display the work you had put in previous months.  Once training/racing becomes a chore instead of a passion that's when you need to take a step back & naturally let your competitive spirit rebuild and eventually your body/mind will tell you when your ready to get back to training! 

The two factors of my struggles this year were mental fitness and race day nutrition.  It's these personal experiences that you can grow from & give you something to figure out going into next year. Qualifying for Las Vegas was the main goal of the 2012 season & I nailed it.  I am glad to have gotten a chance to race there & finish what I committed to.

2013 Steps to Progress:

1. Bike fit:  I never had a chance to get a bike fit last year. It probably wasn't a smart idea to avoid this as I have heard a bike fit is one of the best $200 you can spend to improve speed/position & avoid any injuires from improper form.

2. Find a Coach:  I have used several great triathlete resources around me for advice the past 3 years & even hired a great coach for a couple of months, who raced and had some really valuable insite that lead me to great results in 2011.  Financially it is expensive, but in 2013 in order to step up a level I will need a full-time coach to plan all of my workouts & give me guidance on a weekly basis.  There are so many things in Triathlon to learn & figure out & I feel I have gotten as far as I can without a coach.

3. Power Meter for Cycling:  One of the most difficult tasks in cycling is to measure progress in training.  You have several factors that can affect a bike workout; weather conditions (wind, elevation ), heart rate (variable) & it's very easy to cheat a workout.  In a perfect world I could do the exact same bike route with a heart monitor in the exact same weather conditions and then analyze my speed/time and heart rate & see if I have gotten faster.  This is unrealistic as weather conditions/heart rate are always variable & most cyclist are biking more than location during the year.  A power meter measures your power in terms of watts.  So regardless if you are in a headwind/or tailwind your wattage doesn't lie.  When you finish a workout with a powermeter you have that wattage you can analyze & you can plan workouts to keep to a certain power number.  Right now, the only measure I have is a heart rate.

2013 Race Plan:

1.  I think a 15-18 hour training week is too much time to balance with a full-time job.  So Im thinking more like a 10-13 hour week.

2.  The past 3 years I have been racing all different types from sprints to the full Ironman this year.  I  never had time to really excel at one distance the way I would like.  I think with time constraints focusing on the Olympic distance races and mixing in one to two half ironmans will be a good fit.  I will most likely add a Syracuse 70.3 or a Timberman 70.3 to the race schedule.  I want to get a good 3-4 olympic events in & a couple sprint events.  I look forward to the shorter races where you can go all out, have less of a recovery, & even more importantly have more free time to do normal things.

3.  Will plan at least 1 or 2 half marathons early in the year, maybe a couple late season 5k's.  Goal of going well below 1:20. & going sub 17 min for the 5k.

4. Goal of qualifying for Team USA for USAT nationals.