Ways to Improve Your Triathlon Time

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You might have undergone several triathlons and now that you’ve gotten the hang of it, you have decided on enhancing your competition times. It can be hard measuring each triathlon to one another because of a few factors like venues since they differ too, but still now is the right time to go over your past performances, evaluate your triathlon times and prepare goals for the next race.

Here are several tips that you can use to keep yourself on track.

Assess Your Last Races

In order to set goals for yourself, you should try to go over and check your past performances. One good way to evaluate them is to create your own diary or file of your results. Jot down your results from your earlier race and add more each time you undertake a competition. Making a reference out of your last few performances will help you with not only your future goals, but improvements in your next training regimen as well.

If you’re competing with a triathlon GPS watch with heart rate monitor, you should compare the data of all triathlons. Check when was your heart rate going up, when was your running pace slowing down, etc. What were the reasons behind all this? Maybe there was a very good reason (going uphill slows you down) but it’s good to track all the information and see whether you can learn from it in order to go faster next time!

Weigh Up Related Factors

Once you create your competition results file or diary, do not forget to include the elements that can affect your performance during the race. They can be the venue or the weather conditions. Mention the situation of the water whether it was even or shifting, whether it was raining that day or blustery. Prior to your next triathlon race, you can go over this part and include this factor in your goal plans.

Making Your Goals

Categorize your competition by means of each leg of the race—jot down your set goals for every segment of the race, not the complete competition time. This will assist you in keeping yourself with your set goals as you go on in the competition. Inspect the time at intermissions during the course of the competition to check how you are doing and once you see you are lagging behind your goal time, exert more effort then to keep yourself on track or even surpass your goals.

Do Some Speed/Interval Training

More speed means an overall improvement in your race times. To enhance your time, you should include speed/interval training in your regimen. In order to undertake this, you must get into at least one speed stint each week for your every exercise routine, incorporate the method on your runs and while swimming.

The aim of speed/interval training is to imitate a competition’s intensity and to overexert your entire body, then permit it to recuperate and acclimatize itself to the amplified intensity of the method. Over the course of time, the method will let your body deal harder and better to future strenuous training routines, thus you will be able to race faster.

Know Your Weaknesses and Work On Them

The best accomplishments in life are usually made by correcting your weak points. Thus, if running is not one of your strongest points, make sure that you’ll exert more effort to hone your performance in this segment and work on your sprinting fitness too. Run tracks every day or even get into running programs to further improve your technique.

The same can be said for all other segments of the race like swimming and cycling. Exert more effort amending your weak points and you will witness an exceptional improvement in your game.

Going Over Your Goals

Evaluate your goals following a race. Check all the positive outcomes and redo them on your next competition, but also check all negatives—for example discomfort after the cycling segment, difficult transitions and vice versa. Once you recognized them, you can exert more effort in improving your training to guarantee that those things won’t happen again.

Consider the Transition Area

Among the chief aspects in conquering transitions is familiarizing yourself with the general design of the transition spot, from its entry and exit areas down to your gear’s layout. A lot of triathletes carry a big number of often-unnecessary baggage into the place which not only acts as clutter but as a hindrance to most participants. For a race, carry only the things you really need.

Majority of triathletes position their triathlon bicycles close to the seats so its front wheel meets the ground, which makes for a speedier exit. Furthermore, majority of competitions feature only one transition area and as specified by the rules, participants should bring their cycles back to its allocated positions by the bicycle rack and challenging this rule will bring out penalties.

Keep in mind that you will be within the vicinity of other participants so be considerate of others and manage your gear in a neat, sensible manner. Place your gear in a reverse order fashion—this translates that the articles that are laid at the outermost are the articles you will be wearing last.

Count on a Coach’s Help

Enlisting the help of a well-informed triathlon coach will help you tons, particularly if you are new in the game. The thing is, training for a triathlon can be complex. It includes 3 sports in one competition, which can make training complicated as well. There are hard questions triathletes often ask that can be answered by a skilled coach, so try this one out and you will gain more wisdom and insights.

Swim in Open Waters

Include swimming in open waters the next time. More often than not, triathletes get worried dealing with the sea and to avoid such anxieties and even panic attacks, you have to practice conquering the saltwater. As mentioned earlier before, if you have any weak points, you have to work on them and if swimming in a triathlon is your weakest, you have to conquer this weakness and turn it into one of your newfound strengths.

Eat Well, Rest Well

After those exercise regimens and hard workouts, you must promise yourself to get more adequate sleep/rest. Allow your body ample time to recover to keep them in tip-top shape. Furthermore, make sure that you eat healthy, beneficial meals with lots of carbohydrates, top-quality protein and nutrient-rich foods.