Early races and group training.

Welcome to spring, and if you are here in Florida, it is close to summer out there!

If you are like most triathletes you are enjoying the weather, taking advantage of early season races and working out with friends. This is a large part of the endurance sport life style. There are many benefits in doing races now, and training with groups, the both help you to stay focused and finish workouts and push harder than you would on your own.

One of the things I work with my clients on is how to balance these hard training days, weeks, months with enough recovery to be able to absorb the work and get stronger from it. Too many times athletes get caught up in the mentality that they have to do every group workout that they come across and prove that they are the strongest at every one of them. When in fact there are diminishing returns to this practice. Each hard workout builds on the last one if you let it, if you just keep going with the hard workouts at some point your body will not be able to perform like you want it to.

The wiser athletes are the ones that know when push hard and when to recover. Many times they will avoid group workouts on recovery days, or train with trusted friends who have similar goals for training that day. If you think about it you can still do the group workouts on easy days, just don’t be attached to being the strongest or fastest. In fact, if you are really competitive going easy every other workout will give you an advantage on the hard days.

Training like this should allow you to have fun and enjoy the group training and be able to improve your fitness through the season. This way your late season races will be your best, instead of a suffer fest because you are burned out and cannot wait for the off season.

In a future post I will talk about how to get the most from group training to prepare you for swimming with groups in races, riding without drafting, and efficient running. Of course, nutrition!

Train smart and exceed your expectations!