Planning Your Triathlon Season plus Workbook Planner
Karen Parnell BEng (Hons) CEng MBA CPT
Helping Triathletes & Swimmers meet or exceed their Training & Race Goals | 121 Coaching | Training Plans | TrainingPeaks | Final Surge | Clinics & Camps Spain | Sports Tech & Blog Writer
Are you planning your next season of triathlon races? Do you pick your races first and then plan around them or plan your season around your family, home and work commitments? Maybe you plan around Age Group qualifiers and European and World Championships. You may even choose IRONMAN events with a view to qualify for Kona.
?How ever you choose your races and events its worth creating a plan.
?The most effective way to create your plan is to climb your highest mountain on your favourite race bike and look down at the bigger picture. Identify what matters to you the most throughout the year of training and racing. Avoid the clashes with family holidays or big birthdays and the work conferences and other big meetings and get togethers.
?Use a framework to prioritize the competing factors of race date and distance, camaraderie, and venue, course, and logistics considerations. Look at your calendar to find good windows for training and racing and then?pick your races. This would enable you to build your race season with intention and in doing so, ensure that your race selection is aligned with both your life outside of triathlon and your priorities within it.
?I’ve put together a free?Workbook?you can download and use to plan your best race season ever.
The Planning Phases
?Phase 1: Consider Your Priorities
?Your priorities provide the basis for your making all your other decisions. Your season planning will require trade-offs, as it will be very unusual to find a race that your friends are doing on the perfect weekend for your calendar at a perfect venue that’s easy to get to with a course that plays to your strengths. If you have found this perfect event jot it down in your planner!
But if you have not found your perfect event, how do you decide which of those factors matters most?
?Identifying your Top Priorities
?Why do you love triathlon?
It’s worth taking a little time to reflect on your last race season to understand what went well, what went not so well, what you really enjoyed and the aspects that you found not as pleasurable. I believe the training journey should be fun and it should not be all about the destination or race.
You can use the first section of the workbook you downloaded to reflect and note down what went well, and you enjoyed in training and racing and the areas you would improve.
For this coming season planning, consider how the areas of:
Factor into your enjoyment of the sport. Your Top Priorities represent how you will view trade-offs and compromises as you move through the season planning process.
Secondary Priorities: What Contributes to Your Perfect Race?
All athletes work with the same considerations when selecting races:
?The way you combine these considerations into your perfect race scenario will however be unique to you.
?Use the brief descriptions of each Top Priority and typical associated Supporting Priorities below as a starting point. Does one description resonate with you, or do you see yourself in pieces of several descriptions? Home in on your Top one or two Priorities and then build your combination of Supporting Priorities to create your priority list.
?What Type of Athlete are You?
Now that you’ve identified your Top and Secondary Priorities, make sure not to lose sight of them. On your worksheet:
1. If you have one Top Priority, circle it on the provided workbook; if you have two, circle the top Top Priority and underline the second.
2. Underline up to three Secondary Priorities.
Phase 2: Consider Race Distance and Training Volume
Selecting the race distances for your upcoming season, particularly your longest race distance, will drive your required training volume and time frame. You shouldn’t commit to that training without also considering the time you want/need to direct toward all the other things in your life: work, family and relationships, other hobbies, and additional commitments.
Next you need to take a look at your work/life/triathlon balance from both subjective and practical perspectives to understand how you will be allocating your time next year. You will use that to confirm your race distances and draft a Rough Outline for your upcoming season.
?Where Does Triathlon Fit Within the Rest of Your Life?
?This question asks you to consider where triathlon ranks relative to the other pieces of your life. For the purpose of season planning, you will look at how well your balancing act and your prioritization interacted with the other aspects of your life this year in order to determine what changes, if any, you can, want to, or should make for next year. Use the first page of the workbook and your reflections on your last race season to help with this process.
?With your engagement level defined, you are ready to draft a Rough Outline for your upcoming season. In your workbook:
?How much of your life is taken up with Triathlon?
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?Now you need to take more of a look at your life outside of triathlon and make sure you have enough time to train, travel and race. First look at the time you dedicated to triathlon this past year aligned with your race distances and then estimate whether your time available for triathlon next year will be the same as or changed from this year.
?With greater clarity on your availability to train and how that corresponds to race distances, create a Revised Outline for your upcoming season in your workbook:
Phase 3: Your Race Calendar
Your calendar for the upcoming year provides the context through which you can expand
your Outline into a Rough Draft. Identifying obvious training conflicts and challenges as well as weeks and months with few anticipated outside impacts on training guides you toward windows where training and racing fit naturally into your calendar.
When Are Your No Race Dates and Busy Months?
Open your planner or digital calendar and flip to the year-long view. Find those blocked dates when you know your training will be severely limited: vacations or holidays, major personal or work events or conferences, or anything else on the calendar that will dramatically interfere with training. Next, look for months or weeks where consistent training is challenging, times where you take frequent vacations, busy seasons at work, or windows of higher-than-usual family obligations, for example.
Note those dates and seasons on the calendar provided in your workbook:
?Where Is the Natural Training Season Within Your Upcoming Year?
?Now step back and look at the calendar in your workbook. Where are the wide-open spaces where training can be scheduled without conflict, and where are the anticipated challenges? Your goal is to place the races on your calendar such that the training they require avoids those challenges. The following guidelines can help fine-tune your race placement:
?Overlaying the races listed in your Revised Outline onto your calendar may have fit like a perfectly or maybe not so much. Your Top Priorities will guide how to navigate the trade-off between scheduling your training and your racing, including possibly taking a few races off your list.
?Evaluate your trade-offs, update your race numbers at each distance if appropriate, and identify ideal or potential race weekends or windows to create your Rough Draft in your workbook:
Phase 4: Final Race Selection
Now you have done your planning you can finally head to the Internet and start scanning online race calendars. Those calendars inevitably won’t align perfectly with your Rough Draft, but that’s okay. Through your work above, you have developed a sensible framework through which you can quickly and easily evaluate all the race choices you scroll through. You know which dates and race distances are ideal for your calendar, but also have your Top and Supporting Priorities to guide your evaluation of other considerations.
Which Races Align with you Life?
Compare your calendar and priorities to the race lists online and look for those races that align with your life commitments. Use your Top and Secondary Priorities to navigate trade-offs and compromises. If Race Venue, Race Course, or Logistics are a priority for you, be sure to dig deeper into your specific priorities within those factors.
?Well done you have completed the process of identifying your priorities, evaluating your time available for training, and understanding when that training fits on your calendar. You found races that fit all three of those criteria or come as close as they can to doing so. You planned your season with purpose and set yourself up to enjoy it because your season plan aligns with what matters to you.
?Finally with your race season solidified, you can now submit the Final Draft of your season plan in your workbook:
?1. Note your chosen races and race dates on your Final Draft. Add reminders to register if you have not done that today.
?2. Using a brightly coloured marker add your race choices to the calendar on your worksheet. And tape the completed worksheet to your refrigerator if you want your household to know your races and their no-go zones!
?Now to start your training…
?If you need help planning your race season, need a race plan or 121 coaching then get in touch: [email protected]
?Karen Parnell?is a Level 3 British Triathlon and IRONMAN Certified Coach, WOWSA Level 3 open water swimming coach and NASM Personal Trainer and Sports Technology Writer.?
Need a training plan? I have plans on TrainingPeaks, FinalSurge and FinalSurge IRONMAN marketplace:
I also coach a very small number of athletes one to one for all triathlon distances, open water swimming events and running races, email me for details and availability. [email protected]