Opening Your Season
FOUR Reminders to Rule Them All When Returning to Racing
by Campfire Co-founders Molly Balfe and Chris Bagg
Back in action at early season races in Montague, California
Flowers bloom, the sunlight stretches past six pm, and cyclists pull their bikes off the trainer to head outside, maybe not wearing every piece of clothing they own. This change of the season in North America portends one thing: RACE season is nearly here! Last year’s end of season enthusiasm is FINALLY coming due. If your dreaming and planning in December led you to sign up for a spring race, you may notice that early season racing comes with some considerations that races in June, July, and August don’t require. We’re here with a few recommendations so you can ensure your first race of the year goes smoothly.
Expectations lead to frustrations
We understand why athletes build expectations going into any event. Expectations arise due to the hard work you have been putting in, and it stands to reason that if you have had strong training on the way into your race, you might think that the equation is simple: effort in, result out.
Sadly, any endurance event is more of a black box than that. The equation isn’t simple, and myriad aspects of the race (both positive and negative) can dramatically alter your experience and your results. Even worse, racing from a place of expectation makes every single piece of data that doesn’t line up with your expectations feel like catastrophe. Maybe you stumbled during the beach start and lost the group that you expected to swim with. If you can’t set aside that thought process, you might spend the rest of the swim seething about “what could have been,” which means you’ve been taken out of the race, mentally. You’re now thinking about the past and how it is going to affect the future, instead of focusing on the “see the ball, hit the ball” mentality that leads to great performances.
Let’s keep going with the scenario above. What if you lost the swim group and then pouted about it during the swim, bike, and run, finishing with a result below what your training suggested. But then you look at the times of the athletes in that front swim group and realized you had no chance of swimming with them on your best day.
You were telling yourself one story all day, you let it affect your performance, and the story was…a myth. This is all an expansion of “it’s not over until the lady sings,” but sometimes it’s necessary to go beyond rank idiom.
So when you get to the race during race week, sit down, write your expectations on a piece of paper, and then burn them. Simple and symbolic, so keep checking in with yourself throughout race week to make sure you aren’t letting those expectations creep back into your brain.
Check that Gear
Much of our race specific gear has been gathering dust in our garages, sports bins, and closets for months. Race morning is not the time to find that your wetsuit has a giant tear or your bike tire has been worn down by your trainer. Tune up your bike and give your race gear a workout even if it isn’t new to you. Don’t try to coast on the memory of everything being fine: winter and disuse can be hard on your stuff. Taking your gear out and testing it early will allow you to fix or replace anything that needs attention. As an added bonus, giving yourself a few dress rehearsals will prevent that sleepless pre-travel night where you try to remember where the heck you put your kit (or worse, discovering it is still at the bottom of the backpack you took to your last race, unwashed and riddled with mold!).
It may be warmer where you are racing than where you are training! Kudos to this athlete and her gallon of water.
Prepare for the Conditions
The realities of winter training can complicate the first race of the season. Many of us spend the winter training indoors or layering up for pre-dawn chilly runs. While we undoubtedly score points for hardiness, the cold weather puts us at a unique disadvantage for what seem to be ever-more balmy spring races. If your first race of the season has the potential to be hot and humid, we highly encourage you to do some heat training. Heat and humidity can impair performance by up to 7% in temperatures above 85 degrees, so this can be a critical part of your race preparation. Here are a few tips for how you can be ready for a hot day of racing:
BEFORE: Integrate a heat acclimation protocol into your training starting about six weeks before your goal race. This will prepare your body for hot conditions by increasing plasma volume, sweat rate, and comfort in hot weather. Getting a late start? It is still probably worth it—these adaptations take time to be truly robust, but you’ll start to see a benefit after as little as five consecutive days of heat exposure. But be careful—dehydration and fatigue will from heat training can override the benefit of exposure.
DURING: Incorporate some strategies for internal and external cooling to keep your core temperature as low as possible on race day. If you know you’re going to have a hot water swim, stay as cool as possible before the race begins. Out on the course, chew on ice as you run through the aid station, grab a cold towel for your shoulders, and above all STAY HYDRATED. Combining these strategies may help lower your core temperature, but there is also an effect on performance when athletes’ perception of comfort is increased. Don’t underestimate how important your brain is!
AFTER: We know, you’re finished with the race and ready to sit in the sun and cheer on your fellow athletes with a dehydrating beverage in your hand. Before you end up in the beer tent, make sure you get to work on replacing the fluid you lost on the race course. This will aid your recovery and help get your body temperature back down. Cooling your body after the race is especially critical if you are racing on back-to-back days (we’re looking at you, stage racers).
Remember, it’s a long season out there—you may not feel great now, but your early season races are the base of this year’s Performance Pyramid.
Maintain Perspective
The reality is that most of us thrive in situations where we know what to expect and how to prepare. Event day can be frenetic and anxiety-provoking on a good day, and those emotions can be compounded if there has been a long period of time since you last raced. Expect to forget something or to have something go wrong. Remember that something going wrong isn’t a reflection on you as athlete! Both bad and good things happen, and perfect races are rare at any point in the season. Use the challenges that our sport presents to practice your race mentality: remaining focused on what is within your control. We hope that athletes’ participation in this sport is part of a lifestyle that includes training and racing throughout the year, building a reservoir of expertise to draw upon. Learn what you can from each race and then shift your focus to the next one. And, if nothing else, remember to take your kit out of your backpack.
Looking to make sure this race season is your best yet? Contact us for information about working with one of our expert coaches!