Race Planning And Reflection

An important part of racing is making plans for the race and reflecting on how the race went.

By working thru the process this helps you feel confident and relaxed going into the race knowing what you need to do and when.

Just as importantly is reflecting on how you went against your plan so you can celebrate race dace successes and identify lessons to be learned and what to work on for your next race.

The Process

Racing

1. Record your tactical, technical, mental, physical and nutrition plan for the race the day before in the “Race day plan and goals/targets” activity in TP. As part of this process review your last race notes and include anything you identified to work on in your plan. Record these in the workout comments. Ideally do this a day or two before the race so on the day before the race you can relax knowing you have a plan for the following day. If required adjust the plan after arriving at the race and team meetings.
2. Record metrics on the morning of the race.
3. Upload your race as soon as possible on completion and record the following:
   1. How you felt and how hard the race was.
   2. Review the race and make comments to record if you achieved your goals and what were your race limiters.  Always focus on at least 3 positive aspects and chose the key things you need to improve on in your training and or your next race.

The Why

Our goals is to develop you into the best you can be.  To do that you have to be continually challenging yourself and identify improvements to make. It is a team effort and visibility for everyone involved is critical.  The reason why we are asking you to do the above are detailed below.  Hopefully by understanding the why it will motivate you to complete these tasks in a timely fashion and get as much out of the process as possible.

Racing

1. Helps you plan for your race setting tactical, technical, physical, mental and nutritional goals.
2. Helps you reflect on your race in a timely fashion so you can celebrate what went right and identify what you need to work on in your training and or next race.  By doing this ASAP you can put the race to ‘bed’ and focus on the positive actions or your next race – although if it was the perfect race you can hang on and talk about the success for a bit longer if you want!
3. Informs us as coaches how your race went so that we can adapt training to strengthen any weaknesses and work with you on any technical / tactical / mental / nutritional strategies for the following races.  This is especially important when you are racing remotely and sometimes communications across time zones is difficult.
4. As with the training above this is also very helpful for third parties (e.g current team, future team etc). By showing you are a thinking and informed athlete there is more likely that you will be respected by your current team and seen as a good potential for future teams.