How to Write a Race Report that You Actually Learn From Ep 142

Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. I am your host, Coach Chris Newport, and I figured since so many people raced this past weekend, it would be a great opportunity today to talk all about race reports and debriefs. So if you're watching this on YouTube, I've got our race report template that oftentimes we'll use with athletes, but at this— this at least gives you some more detailed report structure so that you can truly reflect on a race experience. So many athletes I have found who race, they may be extraordinarily disappointed in themselves, and then they don't necessarily have any evidence to back up the disappointment when there wasn't necessarily a strategy or an expectation going into it. So this is the back end the debrief part, but expecting that there should be a part on the front end to say, why am I doing this? What's my expectation? What are my goals for this event? And perhaps even some expected times. And that's what our coaches, I will have to say, are pretty darn good at in terms of supporting athletes in managing their expectations. Going into various events so that they can feel more calm, more confident, and just overall having a better time as they go into the event. So I'm going to walk you through this race report or debrief, and then I also want to provide you a couple of more specific examples of various athletes and their debriefs and what may have gone well and what may have needed some adjustments. So the first thing to ask yourself in your either pre-race report or post-race report is number one, why this race? So what made you choose this particular race? What personal goals, challenges, or motivations were behind your decision? Was it part of a bigger season plan or just a one-off adventure? So thinking through those things and then looking at your training journey reflections. This is really important because I think that so many people don't necessarily do this, or if they feel like they performed not up to their hypothetical expectation, then they're not truly reflecting on evidence-based training journeys. So the questions here to ask are: how did your training go leading up to the race? What wins did you have? What potential struggles or setbacks did you have? What areas of improvement or skill development did you notice? And I'm going to talk about that in some of our examples. And then did you adjust your training due to injury, travel, or other life events? Because let's be honest, y'all, life is gonna life. Like, that's just how it goes. So your training journey is exactly that, it's a journey. So there is no quote-unquote perfect training, and we're also unique and fabulous. So be sure to honor that. All right. So third thing that we liked to ask is what are your pre-race preparation and logistics that you need to do? So when did you arrive? How did your travel go? What were your routines leading up to race day? Like sleep, like meals, maybe like a shakeout run or a pre-race bike ride just to make them run through all the gears. What were your gear check and pre-race rituals? What went smoothly? What perhaps would you improve? And then looking at, of course, race gate, race day conditions. So if you were one who just did White Lake Half Ironman this past weekend, uh, God bless you. There, it rained the entire time. So certainly entering your weather, the terrain, the surface, the elevation, anything unusual, delays, course changes, et cetera. If you did in fact do White Lake Half Ironman, the The intention was for a 56-mile bike ride, and of course it got shortened, um, for safety of the athletes. So those are things to certainly write down on your debrief. And then we have the actual race breakdown. So if you are doing triathlon, swim, bike, and run, or if you're doing Humans of Steel, which is our race, which is the opposite, run, bike, and swim, or if you're just doing a running race or cycling race, whatever it is, break it down into each individual segment. Segment. So what was your course type? What was your distance and format? What were the water conditions? What was your starting strategy and pacing? Oh my gosh, can I tell you how important that is, pacing. Anything that may have surprised you? Any key mental or physical wins? Any gear issues or wins? Any pacing or fueling? If you are doing triathlon, how did your legs feeling getting off the bike? Or again, if you're doing something like our Humans steel event, which is run, bike, swim. How did your legs feel coming off the bike while in the water? How'd your arms feel? Those types of things. And then any notes you want to take in terms of transitions. Again, if it was a multi-sport event, or I know some of these bigger marathons, you're having to take buses, you're having to wait for an extended period of time. So perhaps your breakfast is at 6 o'clock in the morning, but you don't start until 11, so there may be a gap there. So how, how did you handle that? So always great to take those notes, to keep that in here. Next up is results and reflections. So what was your finish time? What was your goal time? What are things that you are most proud of? How did this race compare to your expectations? And is there anything you would have done differently? Then fueling and hydration notes, of course, one of my favorites. What was your plan for pre-race, during, and post-race Fueling. What products or foods did you use? Did it work? Any GI issues, any cramping, any, uh, bonking, and anything you would change for next time? Perhaps it's related to the next one, which is gear and equipment notes. I had an athlete this week told me that he didn't quite clip his water bottle in completely into his aero bars and went over a bump and it nearly went like shooting out across the road. Luckily he was able to catch it, but things like that, be sure that you hear that click when you put your water bottles into the actual holder. So that would certainly be a note that he would write. And then again, like I had alluded to, what were any gear or equipment notes? Was there anything specific that you used if you did multisport for swim, bike, or run? And if it gets more technical, if there were things like— I'll give you an example. I was at the Whitewater Triathlon this past weekend and it was supposed to rain pretty consistently. It ended up being wet but not overly muddy, but as a precaution, I dropped my tire pressure pretty significantly and I'm so glad that I did that. So that would be in my post-race debrief. And then again, any nutrition setup, any transition setup, what worked well, what might need slight tweaking. And then getting down even deeper. So hopefully, hopefully you guys are hanging with me with all these different questions, but these are, these are important to note, your strategy and execution. So this is oftentimes what people will leave out, and this is what I would have to say our coaches do really well with our athletes, is creating a pacing strategy, making sure that you have a plan for your nutrition and hydration. Maybe you even need to submit it to your coach. We do that as part of our Fueling and Hydration Bootcamp that's coming up. Were there any mental strategies that you used? And of course, I wish that Coach Carly would hear to talk about all the wonderful sports psychology mental strategies. This isn't just a one-off thing. This is something that you need to practice, just like, you know, swim, bike, run. Did you follow your plan? Did you adapt? Or a little bit of both? Number 10 is what were the lessons you learned? So thinking about 2 to 3 takeaways that you'll potentially bring into your next race. So, and I really want you guys to try to give these some thoughts, you know. Yes, I'm reading you these questions, but as I'm saying these, are there things coming up that perhaps wouldn't otherwise come up had you just like done the race and been like, okay, you know, that sucked, or that was great, or whatever, just kind of giving it a one-word label and then just moving on and not actually learning from it because That's really what this process is all about. And then similarly, what did this race teach you about yourself? Were there any unexpected insights or aha moments? I love a good aha moment, you guys. And then what's next? So what does— how does this race fit into your bigger season or your bigger goals? What might be the next race or challenge? And you may not be ready to answer that question yet, and that's okay. And write that down. Like, I don't know what I'm going to do next. And then how has this experience shifted your mindset or your motivation? So, uh, you guys heard all about how my mindset and motivation changed after XTERRA World Championships a couple of podcasts ago, so I'm happy to link to that as well if you want to hear all that. But then we've got a separate section that's for coach notes. So this could be for coach feedback, for review, for next steps. And then getting into my athlete examples. So every week our coaches meet and review things like this. So we reviewed several athletes' performances from this past weekend in our meeting that we had this week. And then I'll give you another example of another athlete who recently did a race. last month, that perhaps that strategy was not fully executed and they felt the ensuing results. So Coach Notes Go is even deeper. Now we get into some of the deeper analytics when we actually open up the workout file and see what were the expectations going in and then what were the analytics. So some of the things that we like to look for not only are some of the obvious ones like time, but also if we're looking at bike more specifically, if we're looking at power numbers, some of the things that we like to look at are normalized power, not just average power. We also look at something called intensity factor, and then we also look at something called variability index. So where did all those fit into the strategy that we were trying to execute going into the race? So the first athlete I want to give you an example of, and I'm going to leave all these folks nameless, but we have one athlete who is a newer athlete to triathlon in general and certainly to the half iron distance or the 70.3 distance. She had a very specific strategy going in and then we opened up and granted she doesn't have power, so we were able to go off of her heart rate data. We went into our heart rate data for each, the swim, bike, and run, and then we're able to look at the overall results from the race and be able to compare where she was in terms of the rest of the field. And then of course, looking at USA Triathlon rankings or scores that are, um, used for that particular race. And then seeing, was she able to actually execute that strategy? And based on her heart rate data, it was beautiful. Everything was super steady. There wasn't a lot of like, uh, rises and falls. She executed the plan beautifully, spot on, and the analytics show it. So that was an example of going into some of the data on the coach's end and actually reviewing it. And then of course the coach is actually going to have some feedback for her on like super kudos and you know, what's going to be next. Conversely, we had an athlete who recently did an Ironman event, and we were looking at his bike file and noticed that about, probably about 20 to 30% of his overall bike ride was spent in both heart rate and power rate in zones 4 and 5, which is an extraordinarily large amount of time to be spending in those higher zones considering the longer distance. And he sort of ran out of steam somewhere around maybe mile 16 or 17. There could have been other things going into play, some maybe musculoskeletal issues or previous injuries that were sort of flaring up. But I would argue that had we executed the strategy of the bike ride being in a certain normalized power with the allowance of going into zone 4 or 5 being in a smaller percentage of the time— sometimes you have to surge, so his variability index was very high, which means that you're sort of surging and slowing and surging and slowing. And of course, that's not an ideal strategy to be doing in something as long as Ironman. So considering that, what— how would we tweak his particular strategy going into his next race and also going into his training? So I also wanted to give you an example of my own experience with Whitewater Tri and my debrief. So when I went into my files, there were a couple of things that I specifically noted was my bike file and my run file. So we'll talk about the run one first. So I spent the majority of my heart rate zones in between zone 3 and zone 5 for a 4-mile run off the bike, which is in my mind a well-executed race to be able to do that shorter distance and execute it well. So that tells me I was sort of topping out on my cardiorespiratory fitness, and perhaps there could be some additional training measures if I wanted to dedicate more time to the run that I could. But certainly, as expected, on the run. The bike is a little bit of a different story. So if I look at my bike file, my zones were more like Zone 2 and 3, and some into 4, and just like a little tiny amount into zone 5. So that tells me I have a bigger cardiorespiratory opportunity for doing that event. So then you start to ask, okay, well, what was holding this athlete back? And I can tell you very specifically, in my case, it would be mountain biking skills. So the greater skill set will allow for the cardiorespiratory engine to start to take off and do its thing. So that's certainly one thing that I have an opportunity to work on over the summer. And the other thing that tells me is nurturing that more Zone 4 and Zone 5 development on the bike, whether it be on the trainer or actually on that specific bike. So the trainer, I've got a road bike, and then I ride my mountain bike. So considering some of that discrepancy too. So some interesting information and comparison opportunities of how you can do your race debrief, and then what we're looking for as a coach perspective to see what are our areas of opportunity, what did we do well, and also considering how much fun did you have. So hopefully this was good information. To see what are some of the things that you should add in your race debrief, in your race report, and also what are some of the things that we look at as coaches in terms of some of your analytics to give you an opportunity to be better, to have a good reflection on some of your experiences and turn that hopefully into areas for opportunity and improvement. For both you and for your coach if you have one. And certainly if you are looking for a coach and somebody to support you in this process of creating that strategy going into a race and being able to reflect and debrief in this sort of style, not only with your one particular coach but also with a whole team of coaches. So that's where we really shine, and we would love to support you in that journey. So if you are interested in coaching, don't forget to head over to theenduranceedge.com www.findyouredge.com/triathloncoaching. And yes, we work with triathletes and we also work with runners. So hopefully that was some good information for you to take into your season. Thank you guys so much for listening, and we will catch you next time on the Find Your Edge podcast.