Why It’s Important to Look for Lessons Even When Race Day Goes Well - Coach Tip Tuesday

Last week, we talked about how disappointment on race day can lead to greater success for endurance athletes.  When things go wrong and/or they miss achieving their goals, athletes have a tendency to ask questions, analyze their performance, and to look at possible changes to their approach to training.  But do they demonstrate the same reflection and thoughtfulness when things go well?

This week, I’m going to ask the same question that I asked last week, but with a different intent:

What if everything does go perfectly?

Over the years, I’ve watched athletes take race days that go well for granted.  Understandably, they get swept up in the emotions of the day and they ride the high that comes from a goal achieved and a job well done.  They don’t stop to reflect, look for lessons, or wonder about exactly why things went well.  They are just happy that they did.

As amazing as these great performances feel, it’s important not to let our emotions mislead us into thinking that there’s nothing else we need to do or that we can do once we achieve a goal.  I’ve seen time and time again how important it is to look at the good days just as carefully as we analyze the disappointing ones.  When we consider the question “What if everything does go perfectly?”, if that perfect day does come to pass we need to also ask ourselves “Why did everything go perfectly?”  

When reflecting on and analyzing a good race day performance, there are some important questions to ask:

• What went well?
• What specific things on race day contributed to the race going well?
• What specific things in training contributed to the race going well?
• What didn’t you do on race day that contributed to the race going well?
• What didn’t you do in training that contributed to the race going well?
• What - if any - changes did you make in training that contributed to the race going well?
• Did you get lucky and get away with something (either in training or on race day)?
• Was there anything you could have done better in training?
• Was there anything you could have done better on race day?
• Is there anything you can or would change in the future?
• What goals do you have for the future?
• What are you willing to do in training moving forward to accomplish future goals?

Outline the Things that Went Well in Training and Racing

A successful race day doesn't ever happen because of one single thing.  Rather, a successful race day is the culmination of an infinite number of little things that add up to yield a positive outcome.  Consciously seeking to understand what most (if not all) of those little things are is the key to being able to have more than one successful race day.

As such, actually listing out the things that went well both in the training leading into race day and on race day itself is an important practice.  Maintaining a good training log can help facilitate this reflection, as it allows athletes to easily go back and review what they did in training and what they felt about it (via both their training files and their subjective post-workout notes).  Try as we might, we will never actually remember all of the details; we need to write them down for our future selves.  This process of reviewing well-kept training logs allows you to hone in on exactly what went well and why it worked, which leads to you being able to leverage that knowledge moving forward.  

I’ve learned that virtually nothing happens by chance; when we are successful, we are almost always successful because of choices we make, behaviors we engage in, and skills we develop, not in spite of them.  Unfortunately, sometimes when we are successful we paradoxically start to disengage from the very behaviors, habits, and choices that led to our success in the first place.  We (often unconsciously) devalue them and/or think we don't need them anymore.  (How many times have you thought “I’m feeling good…I don’t need to do that and/or I can skip that?”)  This is true for big things (such as hydration, sleep, and consistency), but it is especially true of seemingly small and insignificant supporting behaviors such as stretching, proper warm-ups and cool-downs, and recovery habits.

The things that led us to success can help keep us being successful.  As such, thoughtfully considering and identifying exactly which things in our training and racing led to our success helps us continue them moving forward so we can give ourselves a higher probability of continued success.

What You Didn’t Do Is Just as Important as What You Did Do

There are an infinite number of things we can include in our training and racing.  What we choose not to do is often just as important - if not more so - than what we do choose to do.  In endurance sports, it’s very easy to do too much too soon or to implement the wrong combination of elements in training and racing.

When athletes are successful, we usually see what they do do; we don’t often consider the things that they didn’t do that enabled them to be successful.  Here are some common things that athletes might choose not to do that enable them to be successful (this is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list of all of the things an athlete may choose not to do):

• Plan and execute workouts based on what they want, not what they need
• Consume alcohol
• Stay up late
• Shortchange sleep
• Forgo training with athletes who are not training for the same goals
• Group workouts that are not in alignment with an athlete’s current ability
• Other types of physical activity that may detract from their training workouts

What you choose not to do may very well have been part of your recipe for success.  Our current culture values making changes through addition, rather than through subtraction.  However, subtractive changes can yield very successful outcomes.  In addition to thinking about what you may need to add or layer into your training, you should also consider if there’s something that you should edit out.

Recognize If You Were Lucky or If You Got Away with Something

A common default thought process that many athletes have after a successful race day performance is this: They think that the method or process that led to that positive result was sound and a good one.

When something goes well in endurance sports (either in training or on race day), many athletes develop a confirmation bias, which is the tendency of people to favor information that strengthens their beliefs or values.  In endurance sports, when an end result is what an athlete wants, the result itself confirms to the athlete that how they got to it was okay, and they don’t necessarily seek to change their behaviors in the future because they expect that the same thing will work again.  A confirmation bias is very difficult to dislodge once it is affirmed, which is why it’s really important to ask ourselves the question, “Did I get lucky and/or get away with something?” when we have a successful race day.

Like we discussed earlier, there certainly are many times when athletes engage in sound practices and their choices to engage in those sound practices help yield successful outcomes.  But there are also many times when this is not true; all athletes need to develop the self-awareness to discern what is a good habit or behavior from what isn’t.  We all have blindspots, and it takes a lot of time and experience to be able to recognize them. 

When confronted about blindspots or about the truth that they might have gotten away with something, most people’s first instinct will be to go on the defensive and state why what they did wasn’t the result of luck.  As you can imagine, it is hard to identify our own blindspots.  (If this wasn’t true, they wouldn’t be blindspots.)  Engaging in thoughtful self-reflection after a successful race can help you develop the self-awareness to more readily identify blindspots or when you get away with something.  Working with a coach can also be useful for this purpose, since a coach is a third-party observer who can more readily identify things that you may not be able (or, perhaps more accurately, want) to see about yourself or what you’re doing in your training and racing.

Your Future is Whatever You Make It

Part of the appeal of endurance sports is that there are an infinite number of goals we can set and things we can aim to achieve.  Our work is never “done;” there are always other goals that can be set and as a result, there’s always a yearning to strive for more.  As a result, even if we achieve one goal (and even if we achieve exactly what we hoped), athletes generally always have their head turned toward what possibilities might be next.  There’s always something else we can seek to achieve in the future.

Thus, as part of a reflection of a race day when things went well, it’s a good idea to ask yourself if there’s anything you could have done differently or better in your training or on race day that might help you achieve future goals and be even more successful moving forward.  It’s also important to ask yourself what your goals for the future are.  (Remember: You shouldn’t ever have secret goals.  You should always write down what your goals are and share them with the relevant people who are supporting you on your endurance sports journey; the only way to achieve what you want is to say it out loud and chart a course toward that target.  If you don’t specifically aim for a target, you’ll almost certainly miss the target.)  

Then, ask yourself what you will be willing to do in training to achieve those goals.  After tasting some success, you may be willing to change what you’re doing in order to help unlock more of your potential.  Often, we need proof that our investment of our time, our money, and our energy into training is worth it, and that includes the sacrifices we make for it along the way.  A successful race day can show us that our investment has been worth it, thus inspiring us to invest further in our endurance sports goals.

The Bottom Line

The hard days aren’t the only days that teach us something.  While the disappointing days often teach us the hardest and perhaps the most memorable lessons, the days when things go as we hope or envision have something to teach us, too.  It’s important to make sure that you ask yourselves why things went well so you can carry those lessons forward with you to help chart a sound course to help you achieve any and all goals you set in the future.