How to avoid disappointment and bouncing back

oscar_p

Hi all
I had a bit of a downer day and ended up questioning why I have been putting myself though all this training to then potentially miss out on my intended (aka self inflicted hoped for) time based target.
We all spend a lot of time away from family, effort and money on perusing our own perceived success at a once a year event - our A race.

What do other team members define as a good day at the office? Is it finishing in the top 3 / 10 / 20 of your AG, or just finishing???
More important, what do you do to bounce back if things don't go so well....

So for my 1st IM at challenge Roth last year I had 3 simple objectives:
1) get to the start line in one piece
2) finish. Do what ever it took to finish in under 17hrs.
3) the time based objectives.... Swim in x, bike in y etc.
Result was I started the race and I finished the race in under 17hrs. Job done. Great kudos, so proud, over the moon. . I missed my (now I understand 8 months later) unrealistic times I had set myself for the bike and run.

4 years ago I did the London marathon - my 1st. Wanted to go sub 4hrs. Didn't (by 15mins). Am still gutted.

In my mind (but not my kids, family and friends) it was not good enough. I can (and will) do better. Perhaps I'm putting too much pressure on myself to do something that is not realistic.

I have what I call "unfinished business" with the bike and run (or in my case not repeating a 32km cramp induced hobble walk)

So this year I'm going to do things differently. I joined EN. I've signed up for a small (500 people) IM. Only 3 people outside home know I'm doing it. I'm going to turn up without looking at any pace charts, what if scenarios, or even a time in mind. I will chill out and execute my race plan. I may even just turn off my speed and time on the bike and stick to power...
I wonder what will happen (apart from one certainly - me crossing the finish line). I may surprise myself

How do others at EN deal with fall out of missing a self-inflected (potentially un-realistic) targets or having a bad race??
Appreciate your thoughts
G

Bruce Thompson

Graham...great post and I'm glad you put this out there.  All of us have had bad races or races that didn't meet our expectations.   Here is how I deal with it.

1) What can I learn from it?  What went wrong and how do I change it next race?  Was my pacing or nutrition wrong?  did I drink enough?  Was I not rested enough for the race?  Was my training simply not adequate for my race expectations?  Did I have an injury that prevented me from going faster?  What can I do to organize my transitions better?

2) My first goal of every race is to execute as best as I can at each moment in the race.  If I do that, and then string hundreds of good moments together, I'll have a good race no matter the time.  Example: last summer I set a goal of going sub 5 hours for the Racine HIM (I had done 5:15 the year before in the same race).  I finished in 5:16 but felt like I had a good race anyway.  The swim was much rougher than prior year with 3 ft waves crashing on the Lake Michigan beach at the start (prior year the Lake was smooth as glass).  I swam 4 minutes slower. On the bike I was expecting to be 5 minutes faster than prior year but ended up 4 minutes slower.  At mile 20 on the bike I got stung by a bee on my arm (how do you plan for that), and I'm mildly allergic to bee stings.   I did the best I could by dosing the sting with water and pouring the rest of the water on my head and neck so not to get dizzy.  I knew I was going to feel weak for a while so I just shifted into an easy gear and rode along at  Z1 pace.  I wanted to recover from the sting before the run, but the time was gone on the bike.  Eventually I felt better and was able to get back to Z3 pace for the last 5 miles of the bike.  On the run I felt fine and had a good run.  It was really hot that day (93F) so I made sure I got extra water at each aid station by walking a few more steps to get the H2O down.  it cost me a few seconds but was the right execution decision. I ran 7 minutes faster than the prior year, almost making up all the time I lost on the swim and bike. Net, my race time was 1 minute slower than prior year but I felt like I had a better executed race given the situation.

3) I like your idea of just focusing on your power meter in the next race.  You stick to your power target and the time will take care of itself.

4) After doing #1, forget about the last race.  Think ahead.  Remember - we choose to do something (race IMs and HIMs) that few people on the planet are able to do.  That makes us pretty unique, no matter what your time on race day. 

Congrats on Challenge Roth and good luck in your future races.  Hope this helps.  I am curious to hear what others have to say about this topic.

rlh2000

I think it is always tough to focus so much energy on one event. Even if everything goes perfectly, which is rare, there can still be a let down when it is done. I grew up doing gymnastics very competitively. Training like crazy and it came down to how you did on a routine just over a minute long (or a vault that is over in seconds). So many times I would do it perfectly just before it counted, and then screw it up in front of the judges. It was disappointing, and never stopped being, but I loved the sport and the practices as much as I did competing, so life goes on. I think triathlon is a bit different in that training isn't always fun (not that gymnastics was either, but very different) and we measure our improvement and we expect it to show. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

I agree with Bruce, focus on what you can learn. But also use it as motivation. I did a half marathon a couple weeks ago, and botched it up big time. Even if I had executed well, I would have still been disappointed. I had just completed the outseason, but did a ton of traveling during it so missed a lot of workouts. Taking this as a lesson/reminder that consistent training will get me better results, and it has worked so far.

Overall, I try to not focus on just a sole race. Other races can help spread the emotions, but also seeing the training as fun as possible. And remind yourself that even if a race went south, the training was still not for nothing, and that fitness and lessons learned will transfer to future races. Watching the Olympics can put things in perspective- these folks are living their dream right now but if something goes wrong, they have to wait 4 yrs to give it another go. We just have to wait a year, if that!

tim cronk

“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
- Bruce Lee
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”
- Bruce Lee

A goal has to be realistic and not based on "hope".... MY Quote.... "Hope is not a rule." I use this in other things but it applies here as well..

Congratulations on Challenge Roth and your decision to come to EN....

Follow your EN plan, spend lots of time on the forums , most of all pay attention to the execution stuff (4 keys) ! Race Day is OK to have time goals but you need to execute within your abilities to unlock that potential.... Let the time take care of itself (great idea with Power and NO speed many of us race like that)... The IM is not easy, its a puzzle to be solved with many parts , long day with lots of decisions.... Embrace the difficulty of it!

Disappointment and Bouncing Back-- This will be different for everyone.... Many report feelings of depression after and IM regardless of results.... I don't know how the olympians can deal with what they go through specially the quick events...... After 4 IM's and setting PR's on each successive one , I made the decision to go for a KQ on #5 and I put it out there.... Result was a big fat DNF.... Complete failure.... Being the type A that I am and you probably are , everybody thought I would be devastated. Strangely enough it did not bother me.... I channeled this failure and energy into my next successful attempt!

Put in the training.
Learn to execute.
Make realistic goals.
Accept your outcome no matter what. There is always something to be learned!
Enjoy the day... And think "I am lucky to be racing this IM" Dave Tallo
Only compare yourself to yourself! Be proud of your accomplishements!

Al Truscott

"The only bad race race is one you don't learn something from."

My best races, from both an objective (overall place, time) and subjective (whether I felt I performed to my potential) happen(ed) when I did not pay any attention to my speed or times, either overall or within the individual leg.

Marathons and Ironman triathlons are particularly tough to learn from. The longer the race, the more independent variables there are which affect outcome. AND, we do relatively few of these arduous events, so learning about how one performs, or even what those variables are, is a long, MULTI-YEAR process. Enjoy the journey, eh?

MattAaronson

Stay in you box and control what you can control. Time goals are tough because conditions have a huge impact (Bruce's example...and COUNTLESS others...). Placing goals are tough because you never know who will show up. Execution is something you can control...making the most of your fitness and having the best race you can possibly have that day.

But of course, goals that contain a good component of the uncontrollable are everywhere. Qualifying for whatever, going sub-whatever, getting a PR. And when you don't reach them it sure is disappointing. The one thing I know is that when you race your race and have the best race you could have that day, the disappointment is WAY less biting.

Your reference to unrealistic goals is interesting to me. Most folks who are into triathlon to the degree that they're signing up for EN are pretty dialed into their fitness and have reasonably good expectations for what they're capable of. In my experience, if you execute according to the EN protocol, the output is reasonably predictable. Shooting for goals beyond those which your training suggests are possible is, well, unreasonable. I guess my point is that after a season in EN, I doubt you'll have unrealistic goals. I'd be interested to know if, reflecting back on your IM goals by discipline, you would make the same overestimation of your fitness doing it again today. Likewise on the London Marathon…missing a marathon goal by 15 minutes is a pretty big miss if you ran as hard as you could, didn't have any unforeseen issues, and just came up short. On the other hand, if you had some specific unanticipated problem (gastric distress, a blister, muscle cramping, etc, etc, etc.) then, hey, that's racing…

One other thing that will really take the sting out of a missed goal is if you really enjoy the sport and the fitness it gives you. If you don't like training and the only reason you're doing it is to get some time goal over which you have only partial control…well, yeah, not getting that sub-whatever is going to suck really bad. But for many people the journey is part of the goal.

Finally, if the goal is a big one you're really invested in, having a "backup race" can be helpful. When I was preparing for my first-ever marathon last summer I knew I was probably going to be a "one and done" marathoner and I wanted to be sure I'd have the race I was capable of. I also wanted to lay down a respectable time. I had lots of risk of boogering the execution or having my finish time undermined by the conditions. So I signed up for a marathon 5 weeks later as a backup. Psychologically this made a huge impact as I went through my training – I knew I took the "bad day" off the table by having a backup.

Hopefully this is helpful. Most importantly…HAVE FUN OR DON'T DO THIS SPORT!!!

ps. speed and time are not useful metrics to focus on during the bike IMO, I look at watts and that's it.
pps. a 500-person IM sounds like a risky proposition depending on how you think/feel on race day…last year there were a bunch of race reports from folks who did smaller IM-distance races and were negatively impacted by not having a large field. It's probably an individual thing. A lot of people perform better when there is an "event" feel. On the other hand, if you get super nervous and you want your race to feel more like a training day, a small rice might give you that.

Brad Marcus

Although I don't have much to add here, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading all of these posts very much. This information can't be found in anywhere else (magazines, websites, books, etc). When I joined EN, I did so mostly as a place to get online coaching/support. This type of stuff is a huge added benefit in that it's something that crosses all of our minds but rarely discussed. The responses are all from you "seasoned" folks that add so much knowledge. Graham - thanks for starting this thread!

gopetego

Just read this thread - great stuff. Like others I feel like I've failed many more times than I've succeeded. I get down, but just for a short time and I think that is very normal for most of us. But as "they" always say - its how you react when things aren't going your way that is a true measures of your success. I think even Chrisse Welllington said her favorite Kona race was the one she won after her bike accident and she knew she wasn't 100% going into the race. She really had to earned it And, for me, my best race results have usually come when I've least expected them - probably because I wasn't focused so much on the end result.

Good luck!

cgres123

I do the best I can with what I brought to the race i.e. my training. I have a ball park idea of what I'm capable of doing and execute with that ability. My first IM was, like you, I wanted a sub 17 and I got it. I joined EN and learned how to race better which led me to better all my races, not just the IM but everything I'd race.

My last marathon I wanted to knock 15 min off my time and trained for months through out the summer it was one hot summer and heat really kicks my butt. On the way to the marathon I did a half with a PR. I was on the right tract for my marathon. Marathon day in November it was supposed to be cold/cool. The day was unusually hot. I melted and did the marathon missing my goal big time like 30 min or so.
With that it was a lesson learned just another tool to put into my tool box of execution strategies. To me if it isn't fun, I'm not doing it!