TRIATHLON

Race Preparation

By Silas Cullen

What does a race mean to you? Is it a training session with other people? Is it a hard training session with other people? Is it a chance to show off your new bike, running shoes, kayak or suntan? It all depends on your goal for the event. As we climb back into the racing season now is the time to remind ourselves of all those little things that make up Race Preparation.

PEAKING
Peaking for an event mentally and physically is not an easy task; in fact it is very hard to get right every time! Firstly there is the training and structure of your programme that you can talk through with your coach that prepares you physically for your event. Secondly is the mental side that goes along with that and ensures you are itching to race. Being motivated on the start line and not mentally worn out is worth more than any training session you could have performed in your preparation. Remember this when you are building the recovery into your training programme.

NUTRITION
Event nutrition is of course very personal but the principles are the same for everyone. If you are an experienced athlete it is easy to get lazy with nutrition and forget the importance and how much of a difference it makes. If you are new to endurance sports then it is easy to get wrong! A race nutrition plan will generally start from two - three days out, right up to the time you cross the finish line. It will also go from least specific to most specific and most important!

TWO TO THREE DAYS OUT
Drink electrolyte drinks or fruit juices not just plain water. It is important you are hydrated, but drinking too much water can flush your system out and leave you feeling low in energy and washed out. In some cases over hydration can be a serious health risk. Once you are hydrated (peeing clearly and regularly), just drink small quantities keeping your system topped up.

Eating foods that are high in carbohydrate is generally accepted as good practice two to three days out. If you are just getting your head around having a nutrition plan, then do not try anything you read in a 1976 copy of extreme magazine. Pasta, rice, potatoes are a good base to start with. You do not need to over eat, just ensure there is a decent enough portion of carbs in the diet.

The night before your event, have something you are very used to and ideally something you have had often the day before a big or hard training session. That way you know it will not sit funny in your stomach the next day. Mentally this will also help to start getting you in "the zone" as you will be eating your "pre event, night before meal". Having fruit helps digestion as well as giving you a lot of nutrients so is good all the time, as well as the night before an event


Photo © Spomedis / Delly Carr / Triathlon.org

THE MORNING OF THE EVENT
Assuming you are racing in the morning, breakfast will be your last pre event meal. Again, something you are used to having before a long or hard session is essential. If you are somebody who gets very nervous you may need to have breakfast earlier in the morning to ensure you get enough food in, as it is often hard to eat much when you are nervous. For a longer event having something three hours before, then two hours before and then an hour before is a great starting point. Yes, that may mean getting up early! The extra hour of sleep will do you far less good than the extra food will!

You do not need to have more breakfast than you normally would; you just need to spread it out so your stomach can process the food in smaller chunks. This helps if you are finding it hard to eat. It also helps the food come through your system in a steadier stream, so you have your three-hour prior food processed and ready to be used as energy on the start line. Then the food two hours and one hour before is keeping you topped up in the initial stages of the event. The longer the event, the more important it is to start with a topped up system. This is because the chances of hitting the wall in a longer event from glycogen depletion are higher which makes sustained energy and nutrition critical.

The order of foods in the morning is always the hardest to digest food three hours before and the easiest to digest food one hour before. For example if you normally have porridge for breakfast and you often have toast and or a banana in the morning, then you would have porridge three hours before, which might take slightly longer than toast or a banana to digest. Following that probably toast and then the banana which is very quick and easy to digest. You may have different foods and the timing may be slightly different but always follow that hard to easy rule when it comes to the order to have your pre race foods.

As per two to three days out, just enough is the perfect amount when it comes to hydration. Drink when you first wake up three hours before and then just sip small amounts. Drink from the same bottle so that you can tell how much you have had. When you are nervous it is easy to sip every thirty seconds without noticing it. You might need about 750ml from the time you wake up or thereabouts but this will depend on how much you dehydrated overnight - how hot or humid it is etc.

If you struggle with nutrition go and see a nutritionist who specialises in sports nutrition. There could be a few things you are not quite getting right, which will make a positive difference in every event you do for the rest of your life. That is a pretty good return!

DURING THE EVENT
Event nutrition all depends on the length of the event you are doing. In a sprint distance triathlon you will just need to drink. In Ironman or a long multisport event, nutrition plays a huge role and needs to be constantly monitored. The better a job you do with your pre race nutrition the more margin for error you will have during the event. That is, if you don’t quite eat enough during the event itself it will take longer for you to hit the wall if you have good pre race nutrition or you might avoid hitting the wall altogether. If you start the event playing catch up from poor pre event nutrition you will almost certainly not race to your potential.

RACE PLAN
Having a race plan no matter how simple it might be is the next step in your event preparation. Do this with your coach and literally go right though the event predicting what will happen and what your best course of action is. By doing this you will come up with all the "what ifs". For example you may not be a confident swimmer, so you decide to start wide on the start line to avoid the crush at the first mark rounding. Then your what-if strategy at the first buoy might be. "If there are too many people at the first buoy then swim a little wide and avoid the chaos." This will help improve your experience and enjoyment in the event. If you do not go through all the possible scenarios they are much harder to get right at the time and in the heat of the moment. What do you think less confident swimmers do when they get to the first buoy and see the washing machine? They think “ohh no get me out of here!” and then swim straight into the middle of it rather than simply swimming wide. This is a very simple example but if your goal is to win the world champs the same race plan with "what if" scenarios can be played out and planned for.

WARM UP
The warm up is the single most important mental preparation you can do before an event. You also warm up physically, but it is the mental preparation you need to ensure you are "in the zone" on the start line. I recently talked to a track cycling athlete who arrived at the track for a 500m time trial. When they got there they realised they had 15 minutes before their race rather than the two hours they thought they had! In a mad rush they got organised but had no time for their normal 60 minute warm up. In fact there was almost no warm up at all. On the start line they were in fight or flight mode, mentally they were very wound up and in a higher state of alertness due to the panic, but physically the muscles had not prepared. What do you think happened? Yes they did a PB by 1.1 seconds. For this person and that event, being mentally a bit more ‘fired up’ helped at least as much if not more than the physical had done in the past. Maybe they would have performed better with a physical too? The point is that this happens all the time. When people get it right mentally, they normally get it right! The physical side is still very important but think of your warm up as just something you are doing while you mentally prepare for the event.

Have fun getting back into race mode this season and remember all the little things that make a difference to your end performance both physically and mentally!

"The harder you think, the faster you go!"


Originally published in New Zealand Multisport and Triathlete Issue 78, November 2010