2022 Race Planning
The ABCs of planning your race schedule
As you dive into each season, the first thing that usually falls into place is your race calendar. With the pandemic waning and more races being added to the calendar in 2022, it is easy to get overloaded and you may find yourself becoming super motivated to hit a lot of your favorite races, simply because they are all back on the calendar. Add to that the promise of running into friends you have not seen for some time, it’s easy to end up with a race schedule that has you racing far too often.
As we talked about in our TOWER 26 Be Race Ready Podcast (Episodes #83 & #84), the pandemic created a less jam packed race calendar. This offered real benefits to athletes in terms of getting fitter, staying healthy and racing well. Moving into this year, it is important to remember the lessons learned as you approach what looks to be a more “normal” year of racing in 2022.
As you begin to figure out your schedule, you need to pick the races where you are really aiming to be ready to race your best. It is tough to be in your best shape more than a couple times a year so you need to look at your races and decide which ones are going to be your A races for the season. When deciding on these races, make sure they are not too close together; usually a mid summer and fall race work well for athletes. This gives you time to build fitness throughout the winter and spring (in the Northern Hemisphere) and be ready to pop off a couple great races.
Another thing to consider when picking your A races is to look at your family and work schedule. For instance, do you have a busy work month in June? If so, a mid July A race might not be the best choice. It might be best to schedule the earlier season A race for sometime in May. Or, perhaps you have a family vacation at the end of the July? Then, a mid July A race right before your vacation may fit perfectly. You can race hard, then take a mid season break with lighter training during your vacation. Afterwards, you return ready to hit some hard training in August and September to gear up for an October or November A race.
In addition to your A races you might have a few other races considered to be B or C races. While these are not the main focal points of the year, they provide opportunities to hone racing strategies, both mental and physical, in preparation for your best performances in your bigger races for the year. These races can be more local in nature, ones that you can drive to and have less logistical pieces to have in place. Races that are a long drive, or if you have to fly, add a whole other element to racing and ultimately, require a bit more recovery coming out of them just because you have more going on before and after the race. If you make your B and C races easier logistics wise you can race, recover quickly and then get right back into training in preparation for the year’s key events.
Consistency in training
As we just discussed, picking your race schedule is very important in terms of setting up your training for the year. Good races are built on consistent training. If you have too much going on race wise you are spending too much time doing 3 things:
Resting going into a race
Racing
Recovering coming out of a race
While racing does help fitness along, too much racing will start to impact consistency and then affect fitness. Often, if you do a block of 3-4 races in a 6 week period you come out of that time frame less fit than you went into it. Afterwards, you would need a longer period to build your fitness back up. So again, it is important not to bite off more than you can chew in terms of your race schedule. It is often best to have a solid 4-6 week period leading into an A race without any others before it. And, if you do want to jump into that local 10k 4th of July run, it is a C race and can be worked into the schedule as a training session. Often, I might have athletes do a long warm up, a 10k race and then a long cool down. The middle 10k becomes a challenging tempo section in the midst of their long run; they get the training effect and the opportunity to race with local friends.
Lastly, I want to make note of one thing I see often with athletes—the “makeup and/or prove your fitness race.” Maybe something goes wrong at your A July race—you have a mechanical on the bike or make a slight mistake with your hydration and nutrition strategy and go through a bad patch on the run. You come out of the race feeling like you did not get to express your fitness as you had hoped. This is disappointing but resist the urge, especially in the first 72 hours post race, to make any rash decisions and do NOT register for another event to make up for it. If you sign up for a race in August this could ultimately affect your late season event. It could fry you mentally or you might end up lacking the training consistency needed for a solid October race. All the work you did leading into a disappointing race does not disappear. In fact, if you stay the course, are patient and stick to the plan you might end up stronger for it come your final race of the season.
In conclusion, make sure to approach 2022 season planning with the lessons learned from 2020 and 2021 in mind—consistency in training which allows for greater fitness when you get to the start line. If you have a coach make sure to get their thoughts before you hit register on events so they can weigh in on what might be best in terms of your individual training plan.
Happy training and racing!
~Coach Emily
By TOWER 26 Triathlon & Swim Coach, former Pro Triathlete and Collegiate Swimmer, Emily Cocks
