It is a new year and a new race season is almost upon us. For the uninitiated, catching the triathlon bug means more than entering a lot of races, it means entering a lot of races by meticulously planning and preparing by doing research and calculations that would make your high school math teacher proud.
My first “season” started on a whim really – randomly choosing a single race to complete. A couple months before that goal race I entered a few events earlier and actually made it more of a race season. This year I wanted to take some time to carefully select my goals and plan races around them so I can try to be competitive and make it through this year while improving , gaining experience, and having a lot of fun.
If you are more of a recreational athlete and you are training and competing as part of your general fitness, planning a race season probably has more to do with checking vacation time at work against summer cook-outs and birthday parties. In that case, this post isn’t going to be that interesting for you.
Based on an article I ready by Matt Russ I like to think of planning races as the ABC’s of race planning. This is an homage to athletes planning their race schedule to have “A” events – important goal races, “B” races – training and practice for the A events, and “C” races where there isn’t a real set goal other than participating.
To have an A race – you need to have some sort of goal. I’ve been back and forth from the end of the last season on where I really want to go as far as goals are concerned. Ironman and iron man distance races where high up there, but I missed the boat on registering for the ideal ones this season around. Winning my division and age group would be nice, but I’m not entirely sure that is a reasonable goal given my experience and fitness levels.
That really only leaves two options for myself – Destination and Performance goals. So my A races are going to be races that hold a certain appeal in either the situation or location and racing against myself to beat personal best at all distances and disciplines.
The great thing about triathlon is you don’t have to win to be competitive. You get a chance to win over all, but you also get to compete and could win for your age group – a very fair proposition. Most importantly you can compete against your self to always better your performance from race to race and year to year. Interestingly endurance sports like triathlon are one of the few where you can still improve with age, and where most of the top athletes are over 30 years old.
For the coming year, my “A” races are going to be sprint distance triathlons with the goal of besting my times last year and each race this season.
I’d like to expand my race resume and look at adding more Olympic and even a half-iron distance race into this season and will make those my “B” races.
“C” races will most likely be non-tri events that I’d like to do such as a few charity 5ks, trail runs, and cycling events.
The advantage of using this breakdown of races is now I am looking at my calendar I can put the “A” races in first and fill in the “B” and “C” to assure there is an appropriate amount of time for recovery, training volume, and race specific training.
My Tentative Race Calendar for 2012
- June 6 2012 Mt. Evans Accent -run race
- June 10 2012 Denver Triathlon
- June 26 2012 Aquaman Series
- June 23 2012 Loveland Lake to Lake Triathlon
- June 30, 2012 Lookout Mountain Triathlon
- July 3 2012 Aquaman Series
- July 10 2012 Aquaman Series
- July 17 2012 Aquaman Series
- July 24 2012 Aquaman Series
- July 28, 2012 My Way or the Tri Way
- July 29, 2012 HITS Triathlon Series – Fort Collins Race Day
- July 31 2012 Aquaman Series
- August 18 2012 Rattlesnake Triathlon
- August 19 2012 Rattlesnake Triathlon
- September 8 2012 Littlefoot Triathlon
- September 9 2012 Harvest Moon -long course
- September 15, 2012 Crescent Moon Triathlon