When Race Season Ends

When Race Season Ends

What do we do when the racing season ends? Put our feet up and chill out? And lose all that hard earned fitness? Not this time. ---------------------------------------- Come join the fun at www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete [https://www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete] ---------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT What do you do when your race season is over? I've been asking myself that question all week. For almost an entire year, my life revolved around one goal: qualify for the World Championships. Six days a week I trained. Every workout had a purpose. Every interval session, every endurance ride, every swim, every run—it all pointed toward one day on the calendar. When my alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I didn't have to negotiate with myself. I knew why I was getting up. There was no debate. The goal made the decision for me. And after nearly a year of consistent training... I qualified. It was one of the most satisfying athletic achievements of my life. Then, because I'm human—and because my ego wasn't quite finished—I signed up for one more race. I wanted to prove to myself that qualifying wasn't a fluke. Fortunately, that race went well too. Mission accomplished. And now... The triathlon season around here is over. So now what? For years, I've handled the offseason the same way. I take the entire month of August off. No structured training. No TrainerRoad. No worrying about fitness. I sleep in. Go for casual rides. Eat a little more. Enjoy life. Honestly... It's wonderful. I think every athlete deserves periods of genuine recovery. The body needs it. The mind definitely needs it. But over the years I've noticed something. Recovery quietly turns into detraining. By September my FTP has usually dropped about thirty watts. Thirty watts doesn't sound dramatic. But here's what I've learned. The problem isn't losing thirty watts. The problem is how long it takes to earn them back. Every autumn I spend two or three months simply returning to where I was before I stopped training. Only then can I begin building new fitness. It's like climbing halfway up a mountain, hiking back down to the parking lot, and then spending weeks just getting back to the place where you turned around. This year... I don't want to do that. Instead, I'm going to experiment. Rather than stopping completely, I'm going to shift into what I'd call a maintenance phase. Just three rides each week. One longer endurance ride. Two quality sessions—threshold or VO₂ max work. The objective isn't to improve. The objective is simply to hold onto as much fitness as I reasonably can while giving both my body and mind a chance to recover. It sounds simple. But psychologically... It's proving much harder than I expected. I just got back from a five-day cycling trip with friends. And I say "cycling" in quotation marks because we were riding e-bikes at a wonderfully relaxed pace. Before I go any further, let me just say this... Seattle is an incredible cycling city. Bike lanes everywhere. Protected paths through parks. Trails beside rivers. Routes along the ocean. It feels like a city designed by people who actually ride bikes. If you've never cycled there, I highly recommend it. But once I got home... Reality hit. Only one week has passed since my last race. One week. And already I feel... Less motivated. Less fit. Which is funny because physiologically I probably haven't lost very much fitness at all. Fitness doesn't disappear in seven days. Research on endurance athletes consistently shows that most aerobic adaptations are remarkably resilient over short breaks. You may notice your legs feel a little flat, but meaningful losses in aerobic capacity and threshold power usually take several weeks—not several days—to develop. So if my body hasn't changed very much... Why do I already feel different? I think the answer has very little to do with physiology. I think it has everything to do with purpose. Sports psychologists often talk about the power of goal-directed behavior. Clear goals don't just tell us what to do—they organize our attention, our habits, and even our identity. When we know why we're training, our brains spend far less energy debating whether we should train. Motivation isn't something we magically possess. It's something our goals create. There's another concept in psychology called Self-Determination Theory. It suggests that people stay motivated when three basic psychological needs are being met: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy means we feel we're choosing our actions. Competence means we feel ourselves improving. Relatedness means we feel connected to other people through what we're doing. During race season, triathlon checks every one of those boxes. I choose to train. Every workout gives me evidence that I'm improving. And every race connects me to a community of people pursuing similar goals. Then suddenly... The season ends. The races disappear. The training plan ends. The improvements become harder to measure. And without realizing it, one or more of those psychological needs begins to fade. No wonder motivation feels different. I don't think I'm losing discipline. I think I've temporarily lost direction. Last week I knew exactly who I was. I was someone trying to qualify for Worlds. Today... I'm just a guy standing in the garage wondering if I really need to ride the trainer tonight. That identity shift is surprisingly unsettling. I suspect many athletes experience this after a major goal. Maybe runners after a marathon. Cyclists after a gran fondo. Parents after their kids leave home. Professionals after retirement. When a chapter ends, we're left asking a surprisingly uncomfortable question: "Who am I now?" Maybe that's the real challenge of the offseason. Not maintaining fitness. Maintaining purpose. I've been thinking a lot about how to solve that. And I don't think the answer is to immediately find another massive goal. I think it's smaller than that. I think I simply need a plan. Not a vague intention. A written plan. For the next couple of months that means maintenance riding, a few local 10K races just for fun, and volunteering at some triathlon events so I stay connected to the community. After that... I'll begin building my roadmap toward next year's World Championships. But this time I want to do something I've never really done before. I'm going to write the entire thing out. The milestones. The training blocks. The recovery periods. The races. Everything. Because visible plans reduce decision fatigue. When the workout is already on paper, you don't wake up asking, "Should I train today?" You simply execute the next step. That's what goals do. They remove uncertainty. They replace motivation with routine. And maybe that's the lesson I'm learning this week. Purpose isn't something that accidentally appears. It's something we intentionally build. When one season ends, another one doesn't magically begin. We have to create it. So that's my project this week. Not increasing my FTP. Not becoming fitter. Simply creating enough structure that, when September arrives, I haven't lost the fitness—or the sense of purpose—that took an entire year to build. I'll let you know how it goes. Until next time... Peace.

[PREVIEW] When Race Season Ends

What do we do when the racing season ends? Put our feet up and chill out? And lose all that hard earned fitness? Not this time. ---------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT What do you do when your race season is over? I've been asking myself that question all week. For almost an entire year, my life revolved around one goal: qualify for the World Championships. Six days a week I trained. Every workout had a purpose. Every interval session, every endurance ride, every swim, every run—it all pointed toward one day on the calendar. When my alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I didn't have to negotiate with myself. I knew why I was getting up. There was no debate. The goal made the decision for me. And after nearly a year of consistent training... I qualified. It was one of the most satisfying athletic achievements of my life. Then, because I'm human—and because my ego wasn't quite finished—I signed up for one more race. I wanted to prove to myself that qualifying wasn't a fluke. Fortunately, that race went well too. Mission accomplished. And now... The triathlon season around here is over. So now what? For years, I've handled the offseason the same way. I take the entire month of August off. No structured training. No TrainerRoad. No worrying about fitness. I sleep in. Go for casual rides. Eat a little more. Enjoy life. Honestly... It's wonderful. I think every athlete deserves periods of genuine recovery. The body needs it. The mind definitely needs it. But over the years I've noticed something. Recovery quietly turns into detraining. By September my FTP has usually dropped about thirty watts. Thirty watts doesn't sound dramatic. But here's what I've learned. The problem isn't losing thirty watts. The problem is how long it takes to earn them back. Every autumn I spend two or three months simply returning to where I was before I stopped training. Only then can I begin building new fitness. It's like climbing halfway up a mountain, hiking back down to the parking lot, and then spending weeks just getting back to the place where you turned around. This year... I don't want to do that. Instead, I'm going to experiment. Rather than stopping completely, I'm going to shift into what I'd call a maintenance phase. Just three rides each week. One longer endurance ride. Two quality sessions—threshold or VO₂ max work. The objective isn't to improve. The objective is simply to hold onto as much fitness as I reasonably can while giving both my body and mind a chance to recover. It sounds simple. But psychologically... It's proving much harder than I expected. I just got back from a five-day cycling trip with friends. And I say "cycling" in quotation marks because we were riding e-bikes at a wonderfully relaxed pace. Before I go any further, let me just say this... Seattle is an incredible cycling city. Bike lanes everywhere. Protected paths through parks. Trails beside rivers. Routes along the ocean. It feels like a city designed by people who actually ride bikes. If you've never cycled there, I highly recommend it. But once I got home... Reality hit. Only one week has passed since my last race. One week. And already I feel... Less motivated. Less fit. Which is funny because physiologically I probably haven't lost very much fitness at all. Fitness doesn't disappear in seven days. Research on endurance athletes consistently shows that most aerobic adaptations are remarkably resilient over short breaks. You may notice your legs feel a little flat, but meaningful losses in aerobic capacity and threshold power usually take several weeks—not several days—to develop. So if my body hasn't changed very much... Why do I already feel different? I think the answer has very little to do with physiology. I think it has everything to do with purpose. Sports psychologists often talk about the power of goal-directed behavior. Clear goals don't just tell us what to do—they organize our attention, our habits, and even our identity. When we know why we're training, our brains spend far less energy debating whether we should train. Motivation isn't something we magically possess. It's something our goals create. There's another concept in psychology called Self-Determination Theory. It suggests that people stay motivated when three basic psychological needs are being met: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy means we feel we're choosing our actions. Competence means we feel ourselves improving. Relatedness means we feel connected to other people through what we're doing. During race season, triathlon checks every one of those boxes. I choose to train. Every workout gives me evidence that I'm improving. And every race connects me to a community of people pursuing similar goals. Then suddenly... The season ends. The races disappear. The training plan ends. The improvements become harder to measure. And without realizing it, one or more of those psychological needs begins to fade. No wonder motivation feels different. I don't think I'm losing discipline. I think I've temporarily lost direction. Last week I knew exactly who I was. I was someone trying to qualify for Worlds. Today... I'm just a guy standing in the garage wondering if I really need to ride the trainer tonight. That identity shift is surprisingly unsettling. I suspect many athletes experience this after a major goal. Maybe runners after a marathon. Cyclists after a gran fondo. Parents after their kids leave home. Professionals after retirement. When a chapter ends, we're left asking a surprisingly uncomfortable question: "Who am I now?" Maybe that's the real challenge of the offseason. Not maintaining fitness. Maintaining purpose. I've been thinking a lot about how to solve that. And I don't think the answer is to immediately find another massive goal. I think it's smaller than that. I think I simply need a plan. Not a vague intention. A written plan. For the next couple of months that means maintenance riding, a few local 10K races just for fun, and volunteering at some triathlon events so I stay connected to the community. After that... I'll begin building my roadmap toward next year's World Championships. But this time I want to do something I've never really done before. I'm going to write the entire thing out. The milestones. The training blocks. The recovery periods. The races. Everything. Because visible plans reduce decision fatigue. When the workout is already on paper, you don't wake up asking, "Should I train today?" You simply execute the next step. That's what goals do. They remove uncertainty. They replace motivation with routine. And maybe that's the lesson I'm learning this week. Purpose isn't something that accidentally appears. It's something we intentionally build. When one season ends, another one doesn't magically begin. We have to create it. So that's my project this week. Not increasing my FTP. Not becoming fitter. Simply creating enough structure that, when September arrives, I haven't lost the fitness—or the sense of purpose—that took an entire year to build. I'll let you know how it goes. Until next time... Peace.

Race report - Victoria Half Multisport Festival

2nd race in 2 weeks! Was I able to bounce back and race hard or did I crash and burn? listen to find out. ---------------------------------------- Join the fun at www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete [https://www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete]

[PREVIEW] Race Report - Victoria Half Multisport Festival

2nd race in 2 weeks! Was I able to bounce back and race hard or did I crash and burn? listen to find out. ---------------------------------------- Join the fun at www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete [https://www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete]

Triathlon Injuries and the Five Stages of Grief

We all get injured and we all deal with it differently. It recently occurred to me that I seem to go through stages of grief when I am injured. And I don't make the best decisions for my long term health until I reach the last stage. ---------------------------------------- Join the fun at www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete [https://www.patreon.com/thelonelytriathlete] ---------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT Triathlon Injuries and The 5 Stages of Grief Today I want to use the 5 Stages of Grief as a framework to talk about how we, as triathletes, often experience injuries. The Five Stages of Grief weren't actually created to explain sports injuries—or even the grief we feel after someone dies. They were originally observations of people facing their own mortality. Modern psychology tells us grief isn't nearly that tidy. But I've found those five emotions to be a surprisingly useful lens for understanding what happens in my own head every time an injury threatens a session or perhaps a season. As a quick recap, 3 weeks before my end of June race, I hurt my back. And I mean, I really hurt it. I had to take 8 complete days away from training and there were a few moments where I entertained the possibility that I might not be able to race in the World Championship qualifying race that I had been training for for 9 months. With all of my focus on rest, recovery, nutrition, medical attention and every marginally effective treatment I could think of, I managed to get to a place where I thought I might be able to race pain-free. And then, on the Friday before the Sunday race I hurt a different part of my back or neck. Once again, I faced difficult emotions but with luck on my side (and a million units of pain killer in my system) I managed to perform an all-time best race and secure my invitation to join Team Canada and represent at the World Triathlon Championships in Germany next year. My plan was to recover this past week, then get in some short hard efforts next week and once again race a Standard Distance here in Victoria. A race where I came 2nd in my category last year. Yet when I woke up this morning, I had difficuly walking due to a really sore hip. So, once again, I am forced to take extra time off for injury. And it reminded me that I seem to go through the same emotional journey every single time I get injured. I don't think it's just disappointment—I think it's grief. Not grief because someone died, but grief because, in a way, the athlete I thought I was for the next few weeks suddenly disappeared. So, what are the 5 Stage of Grief? And remember, we don't always go through them all and we don't necessarily go through them in a linear order. Stage 1: Denial "I'll be fine." My typical thoughts: It's just tight. I'll loosen up tomorrow. I'll still do my long run. Maybe I'll just bike instead. As triathletes, or simply very motivated people, we often tend to ignore warning signs because training has taught us to push through discomfort. No pain, no gain, right? And if you are anything like me, you've probably Googled 'Can I run on a torn [blank]?' hoping the internet says yes. You know who you are. Stage 2: Anger "This isn't fair." This is where frustration appears. Examples: Why now? I was finally getting fit. Everyone else is training. I did everything right. The timing is unbelievable! If you find yourself in this stage my advice to you would be to avoid social media because it can be almost unbearable to see friends and competitors on Strava crushing their workouts. Stage 3: Bargaining This is probably the funniest stage. "If I only run easy..." "What if I skip intervals and do some Base work instead?" "I'll wear compression sleeves." "I'll ice it." "I'll take one more recovery day." "I'll only run downhill." This is where athletes become expert negotiators with themselves. Now, there is nothing wrong with trying to find a logical, reasonable compromise to work around an injury but realize this is a very dangerous place to be. There is a fine line between "getting through an injury" and "making it much worse". Stage 4: Sadness This is the hardest part. The realization sets in: I'm going to lose fitness. That race might be over. My routine is gone. My identity takes a hit. We feel this way because training isn't just exercise — it's structure, stress relief, community, and confidence. Losing it feels much bigger than just missing a workout. Finally, Stage 5: Acceptance This is where good decisions FINALLY happen. Instead of asking: "How do I save this race?" You begin asking: "What's the smartest way forward?" Examples: Seeing a physiotherapist. Following a rehab plan. Adjusting goals. Cross-training. Sleeping more. Letting HEALING become the training. I've noticed that I can't skip straight to LOGIC. My brain wants to BARGAIN first. It wants to find shortcuts and loopholes. But eventually I reach acceptance, and that's when I actually start making good decisions. The sooner I recognize the emotional process, the sooner I stop fighting reality and start healing. I think it's been the realization that I need to go through these stages of grief when I am injured that have allowed me to stay calmer, cooler, less emotionally charged from my recent setbacks. It isn't easy at any level but the more quickly I move to acceptance, the more quickly I can begin to heal. And while we can't always control how quickly we get to that level the mere fact of recognizing what is happening to us emotionally is one of the biggest pieces of that puzzle. So, if you're injured right now, maybe give yourself a little grace. You might not just be dealing with sore muscles—you might be grieving the session, sessions or even season you thought you were going to have. That's normal. Just don't make permanent training decisions based on TEMPORARY EMOTIONS. Until next time, Peace