2021 Race Season Thoughts

Since 70.3 STG Worlds, I have had a few months of down time to let this season digest and collect my thoughts. I wanted to capture these thoughts so I figured a blog post would be most efficient. 

Going into the 2021 season, I was feeling confident. I have been training consistently for 4 years, this was my 3rd Season with my current coach, and I felt like I was ready for a breakout year.

Post season, I realized a few things:

1. Planning a wedding, getting married, getting pregnant, and major transitions at work all add quite a bit of stress to the plate. In hindsight – I was tired..really tired at times. It’s easy for me to see now, but I really need to get better at realizing how tired I am in the moment. I think I put myself in a hole a few times and didn’t really start to feel myself again until a few weeks after worlds. 
   1. I struggle with understanding that as an athlete, I am going to be tired. Fatigue leads to fitness. But where do I draw the line and say this isn’t OK I need to rest.
2. I don’t have any aspirations to do a full ironman in the near future. Especially with a baby on the way, the time commitment required to do an ironman well does not sound appealing to me right now. I am signed up for (2) 70.3’s this year, otherwise, I might have considered giving the olympic distance focus and even taking a shot at USAT age group nationals
3. Tying into number 2, I enjoy shorter harder intervals (<10 minutes) more than 20, 30, even 60 minutes at a time at 70.3 power/pace. I raced a 5k last weekend and trained for about 10 weeks leading up to it and truly had fun with the program. I felt like I made a ton of progress with my run.
   1. I also realize that the 5k performance may not have been possible without the load of run fitness I had from the tri season. Another thought I have been pondering
   2. I wonder if more shorter VO2 max efforts would be as effective on the bike/swim as they are on the run
4. And finally, I want to take a more relaxed mentality to the races. I think the pressure I put on myself on race day affects my performance..Stress is stress. Some of my best performances came when I haven’t put a lot of emphasis on an event. This most recent 5k, I pretty much knew I could run sub 20 minutes (my goal) as long as I wasn’t sick or something. I did not imagine I would run 19:07. I was relaxed and confident on the line.

In summary, 2021 may not have been my best year, but I have another year of many hours worth of training and learned quite a bit. For 2022, I will focus on better integrating sport into my life, putting less pressure on myself, being more efficient with my training time ( Baby Donaldson due March 2022) as my hours per week will be less than pre baby. I will focus on taking care of my body and doing what I can on the day. And to point number 4, my internal pressure to perform on race day will be less than usual being a first time dad.