One day in March

Whether you’re training for New Zealand Ironman or Ironman Australia, there’s just one day in March when you need to be on top of your game.

About this time of year I answer lots of e-mails adressing lots of fears and doubts. It seems at this time, lots of guys are reading what others are doing. Comparing themselves to others, comparing their training records to others.

When any of us put a post on a triathlon forum, we don’t tell the readers about our disappointing workouts, or the really tired weeks when we had to miss out two or three workouts. We usually post the details of our mega weeks, we might post our power output details of a special time trial.

My advice is, whether you’re doing NZIM or IMOZ, stop reading triathlon chat sites until after the race. It’ll do your head in, unless you’re particularly strong and confident. If you are, you can post your power figures, your swim times and your run splits from your latest track session, and mess with the other guys heads.

Now is the time to go back through your own training diary. If you’ve been keeping a good diary you’ll have recorded all of the gains. All of the positive experiences of the past few months. When I design a training program, it’s a series challenges, which once completed become confidence building experiences. Going back through them is a great way to positively reinforce your strengths. We all have strengths.

It’s natural at this time of year to have a few workouts where you drag yourself through to the end. Not recording any PBs, nothing remarkable, just completion with good technique is a gain. If this is happening too often, look into your recovery feeding and/or your sleep patterns.

It’s impossible to feel great in every session. It’s impossible to set PBs in every session. The important thing to keep in mind, is there’s only one day in March when you have to be totally on top of your game. All of these other workouts are simply pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Not all of the pieces look good, but they all go to make up the picture, you’ll produce on that special day in March.