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How to Approach Your First Race of the Season...

Saturday, 02 May 2015 00:10

HEY EVERYONE: Chain of Lakes (RESULTS) and Cinco Du Mayo (RESULTS) happened this morning. Words and images on COLT will appear tomorrow. Cinco stuff will post on Monday.

Set realistic performance goals before you jump in for your first 2015 race effort.

By Bethany Rutledge (triathlon.competitor.com)

Unless you’ve been racing or training with a lot of structure through the winter, you probably don’t have a confident sense of how to pace your early-season race efforts. Here are some guidelines to help determine appropriate pacing.

Test your baseline and progress.

If you’ve been training in a structured way, you’ve likely already set and trained to your zones. According to Brian Stover, owner of Accelerate 3 Coaching in Tucson, Ariz., you should test regularly every 4–6 weeks to see trends toward improvement.

“Athletes should have one set they repeat and record their times,” he says. “For swimming, it could be an 800 time trial or a series of 300, 400, 500 repeats recording the average pace per 100 through the set. For cycling, it could be a 20K or a series of 10-minute intervals recording the average watts per interval. For the run, do a 5K or a series of 1–2K repeats recording the average time. Over time, you’d hope to (should) see a trend toward faster times.” ...

… then back them up.

Once you’ve tested your max output, it’s time to set a solid framework to back up those max efforts. As a general rule, Stover says, “the demands of the training should surpass—or at least equal—the demands of the race, you just don’t have to do all the sports back to back.”  READ MORE