FEATURES

What Did You Learn About Yourself in '14?

Saturday, 22 November 2014 00:10

By Chris Janzen (for Active.com)

After months of training hard and racing harder, it's tempting to quickly switch into offseason mode and turn your attention to new activities.

But before you pack up the bike and put away the swim fins, you owe it to yourself to thoroughly review what happened (and what didn't) during the race season. This allows you to build on your recent experiences and create an even more rewarding, faster and successful triathlon season next time.

The trap that many triathletes fall into is focusing on just the race results. Win or not? PR or not? Allowing your success to be determined solely by the finish line clock or your ranking is not fair to all the effort and time you invested. You deserve more credit than that.

Here are nine critical, but often overlooked, steps to effectively evaluating your triathlon season — or more accurately, to evaluating yourself during your triathlon season. These nine questions will help give you additional insight and help you to realize more of your potential going forward.

NOTE: Answer these questions in writing. Be very honest. Get specific in your points.....

1. In hindsight, were your season goals clear and attainable?
Did you achieve what you set out to do at the start of the year? Knowing what you know now could you have aimed higher, or were you somewhat unrealistic in your expectations of your time, commitments or the physical skills you needed to develop? Use hindsight as a barometer for thinking ahead to next year and create goals that push you and inspire you to go for it. READ MORE