How to Choose A Triathlon

- I would love to have a race that the trainiacs
just swoop in and descend on.
Start dialing me in a plan, buddy.
Morning, trainiacs.
So, long swim is over, body's actually not feeling
too bad and as I mentioned before, one of the ways
that I stay motivated to keep training
is to always have a next goal in mind and historically,
I've always found if I don't have a goal in mind,
it's really hard for me to get out the habit
of daily training, and it's that daily training
that makes you faster.
When you accumulate little bits of workload
over the course of years and years, that's when
you get fast.
You think about Coach Pat, the guy has done
consistently day in and day out, one or two a day
for like two decades.
And yeah, he does have some really big days
and some really big training weeks and weekends
here and there, but it's that consistency over a long
period of time that makes you fast.
So in my case, what I wanna do right now
is not even let myself get into that mode
of like ah, you know what?
I just did the big swim on the weekend, and maybe
I'll just kinda mess around and not take training
too seriously.
We're right smack dab in the middle of the summer in 2017
and there's no reason for me to not be training
really hard, having a next race in mind.
So what I wanna talk about today is how to pick
that next race because I've gotta pick that next race.
First and foremost, you gotta decide what distance
you wanna do.
I always recommend that people stick to
the longest distance that they can do while still
being able to race it, and what I mean by that
is what is the longest distance you can do
while still maintaining some speed and not just
surviving the race?
In the first couple years of triathlon,
I bounced back and fourth between sprint and Olympic
and what I would find is that around the sprint distance,
I could still maintain some speed and go fairly hard,
but as soon as I got up to Olympic I would have major
energy crashes because I didn't really know
what I was doing and I didn't have a base of fitness
that was big enough to conquer that Olympic.
So what I did was for two or three years,
I went back down to the sprint distance.
I was just able to focus on racing and training
to race that distance race really well.
And what happens is because I'm not having blowups
when I got out into the sprint distance race,
I was able to race it really well, I was able to train
really purposefully, I was able to learn
how my body needed to train and how to race really well.
It was that decision to focus on only the longest distance
race that I could possibly race that I became
a good triathlete.
I would say better triathlete.
And then what happened is after about three seasons,
because I knew my body so well, I was able to step up
from sprint where I was doing about a 1:07 sprint distance
race to Olympic where in the first Olympic race
that I did in four years, I did it 2:14.
I was able to hold the exact pace that I was racing at
in the sprint.
The very next year, I moved up to half iron man
and that was about how long I figured I could actually
race a race, and what I found is in the two half iron mans
that I've done I did 4:46 and then 5:02
in the crazy heat of Campeche, I'm kind of still able
to race them but there's still that aspect
of just holding on.
Still just on the edge of being a little bit
more in control of me than I am of it.
And that's the determinant for am I ready to move up?
Okay, so that's how you pick the distance.
The next determinant of how to pick a race,
do you go local and something easy to get to
or do you go to a destination race,
and the way that I look at that is you can't have
too many big races in a year.
You get maybe two or three really big races in a year,
and to prepare for those, you need
around three to five months.
So if you're going for just like a filler race
that you're gonna train through, by all means,
make it a shorter race, make it a local race.
But if you're looking at having that key race
that you wanna really drop it like it's hot out,
make it a destination race, make it a big event,
make it something that like I say is that little bit
scary and it's your focus to keep you motivated.
So what I'm planning on right now is I want
about four to five months from the long swim right now
until my next big race.
In between then, I might go and do some local races
and just kinda kick around and enter them a few days
ahead of time, but what we're picking right now
that I'm gonna pick with the help of all of you trainiacs,
is the next race.
Let's go do this with a schedule in front of us.
So we're talking half iron man towards the end
of October, early November, ideally somewhere
in North America so that I can use my flying points.
Let's go to the iron man official website
and see where that puts us.
Ooh, we've got North Carolina on October 21st,
we've got Miami on October 22nd, we've got New Orleans
on October 22nd, Austin October 29th,
and Las Cabos in Mexico, November 12th.
Over on the challenge family, Challenge Aruba
on October 22nd, Challenge Florianopolis,
oddly enough in Brazil.
That sounds very like a Greek place.
So those right now are the main contenders.
What I would like all of you trainiacs to do
is I would love to have a race that the trainiacs
just swoop in and descend on.
Of all of those races, comment below
if there's one that you think that you might
be able to go to.
If there's one that is overwhelmingly trainiac heavy
that's easy for everyone to get to,
we should go in and drop kick a race, how about that, hm?
Or if there's a race that is a half iron man distance
around that end of October, beginning of November
timeframe that I don't know about that is close
to a bunch of you, put that in the comments below
and let's get some planning together
to have a race that a bunch of trainiacs descend upon.
Maybe we do some pre-race training together?
I'm liking where this idea's going.
I am liking it a lot.
Yeah, let's start talking about this right now
and doing some planning because it's enough
of a ways away that everyone has time
to do some training and get a program going
where you've got enough time to build up fitness
and start getting prepared for a race
and I am antsy to start training.
Body isn't feeling that bad from a long swim.
On the ride this morning, it was an awesome ride.
Huge group, we're talking like 19 people
which is getting big when we start getting up
into like high 20s that's where the group maxes out,
so we're not far away from there.
- Woohoo swim away!
- Hey, well done, Taren.
- I almost saw a forearm because it was warm enough
for people to not have to bundle up this morning
and the body wasn't feeling too bad.
I was able to hang in with the front group
and do some sprints, do some lead outs.
Granted when I tried to push it from that kinda high gear
to boom, sprinting, I didn't have much there,
but I feel at least good enough
that I can start seeing light at the end of the tunnel
that I can say Pat, start dialing me in a plan, buddy.
In addition to that, by the time you see this,
tomorrow there'll be a grand total of about eight hours
that the open discount of 20% any and all
coaching plans at triathlontaren.com/coaching,
so if you go there and you wanna get a plan,
it's gonna be closed at the end of Friday,
June 29th, and type in trainiacs20 and you get 20% off.
There you go, to work.
Ooh, it's almost lunchtime, delicious.
Hey trainiacs, you know, I was just thinking
on the ride home here about getting into
an actual training program for half iron man,
and you know, I am psyched about it.
I am way, way, way psyched about it,
so psyched that I'm saying way, way psyched
like I'm 13 years old.
Way psyched, just radical.
(static sounds)
Man, it's raining, gotta cover you up.
Cause you're weather sealed, but you're not weatherproof.
I mean the thing about the long swim is that
it's fun and all to have this big crazy goal,
but it's a little bit tedious.
I'm sure you felt that, that every morning
it was like groundhog day, I was starting in the pool.
And your swimming gets slower because
90% of your swimming is done at 37k race pace.
Your running gets slower because you can't run that much,
biking gets slower because I couldn't bike that much,
and I'm really looking forward to having a nice structured
plan that Pat lays out for me, and I smash myself,
hop back on that pain train, and see what I can make
my body do.
So I'm jazzed up for it and hopefully we can do
a race that a bunch of us go for, and if a bunch of you
are also doing one of the coaching plans,
have that as a team goal that we're all doing
all around the world then we converge together
and we just fricken nail it.
Man, that would be so exciting.
Alright, this rain is getting ridiculous.
Let's go inside, later trainiacs.
You have a good day.

How to Choose A Triathlon

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