Athlete Success

Athletic Success

The greatest challenge I face as a coach of endurance athletes is managing ‘athlete fatigue' levels and how it directly impacts and relates to consistency in training. What I have noticed is that athletes who successfully manage fatigue are more consistent with their training (and happier) and ultimately experience overall athletic success. By athletic success I mean their capacity to do the workouts as intended (volume and / or intensity) in training as well as having the ability to execute during races with a performance they are proud (usually fostered by confidence, self-belief and sans ego).

Whether your athletic career is built on the next 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months or 6 years, every day presents an opportunity to develop constructive athletic behaviours. The ultimate goal is to manage the influx of stress load (fatigue) with sufficient recovery thereby allowing your true and honest fitness to rise (growth).

I’ll be brief on a few of the points that contribute to athletic success…

Chasing Fitness. 

Strava has really helps us out here, right? If you find yourself always chasing trophies, KOM’s or QOM’s, segment wins, personal bests in workouts or comparing yourself against “faster” athletes in a workout, save your energy. Rewards will be short-lived and completely delusional. If comparison is your game of choice, consider how little you truly know about that person and their training, athletic history, sleep patterns, life stressors, sacrifices, nutrition, family and genetics. Instead of chasing (that action alone is a stressor), focus on consistency in repeating efforts (back it up day in day out) and zooming out when the minutiae of irrelevant details cloud your vision. What actions, behaviours and efforts really affects your long-term goals? Focus there.

Training Partners. 

Choose your training partners wisely. Really consider who you are spending those long training hours with and what it is about them that brings out the best athletic behaviours in you. Think of the energy they create in your body and even in a group dynamic. Over the years, I have had a small handful of people would be considered as my go-to training partners. I gravitate to them because they are mentally strong, fun, can sometimes go with the flow, don’t race me and rarely try to change my focus for the day. In return, I offer them the same respect.  Whether we train side by side or just share the road together, we are in sync and equally committed to the work we have to do. 

Surround yourself by those that bring out the best in you. You will undoubtedly return the favour. 

Chasing Averages.

If you follow Hunter Allen’s Power-based Training Handbook to plan workouts or exclusively use numbers in the absence of what your body gives you on the day to direct your training (and then add 5-10% to the intensity), you will crack at some point.  This is speaking to those that use a power meter on their bike [or pace in running]. Prior to knowing what your average was for a ride or run, athletes tend to think they are always riding or running harder than they actually were. When we chase, our perception of effort is off kilter and usually inflated. 

This concept is especially important in racing longer endurance events. If you chase an average watt range (say 180-190watts), the majority of your ride will be well over that range and you’ll fail to notice the power spikes you are using to manipulate your average.  In other words, you are burning costly matches. At some point in the near future, your legs will shut off and watt averages won’t be the deciding factor for a performance.  I would rather hear you report that while your watts were steady, your perception of effort was much lower. That’s economy.

Use this week, to set up your devices so the readings give you all the information to mange your effort. Remove all the punchy, testing, ego driven spikes (unless they are planned into your training). Pay close attention to how you feel at what effort. Feel is an invaluable sensation…especially if the power meter drops out or garmin dies….the road is still there for you. The same road you may’ve ridden a billion times.

Be Deliberate.

Purpose feels good. Intention feels right. Very fit athletes have insatiable capacity to train a bit too hard. When done over and over and over, the recovery requirement increases dramatically and the training benefits are reduced significantly. 

If this is race week for you, your “training” is done. It’s time to let the fitness rise to the surface. If this is an important training block for you, color inside the lines of the workout, more is not always better. If you are recovering from a race, be deliberate with your recovery techniques. In all cases, your body will get stronger with consistency.

The final three points are maybe obvious but must be mentioned:

• Sleep (see http://brite.coach/new-blog/20162017/047/0720/having-the-courage-to-rest). 
• Life stress. Consciously choosing to do less in order to achieve more…thank you Seth Godin:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/01/more-and-less.html

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/the-more-or-less-approach-to-getting-and-keeping-a-job.html 

• Nutrition. Eat real food with minimal ingredients. 

Part II - HYDRATION FROM AN ENDURANCE ATHLETE'S PERSPECTIVE

Why is starting hydrated so important? "Once you begin sweating you're generally going to be fighting a losing battle against fluid and electrolyte loss, so starting off properly hydrated can be extremely beneficial," says co-founder of Precision Hydration Andy Blow. "When you're properly hydrated you have a larger reservoir of fluid to draw from over time than if you're dehydrated."

PART II - HYDRATION FROM AN ENDURANCE ATHLETE'S PERSPECTIVE

In our Part II of our 3-part series related to Nutrition, Hydration and Gut Health for endurance athletes, we will focus on dynamic topic of hydration, electrolytes and the individualization of fluid balance. If you missed Part I (fuelling guidelines for the endurance athlete) please take some time to review the information as each aspect is optimized when working together. 

Becoming dehydrated during an endurance event can easily derail not only a potential breakthrough performance but it can also turn a functional athlete into a zombie stumbling aimlessly through a race course. Becoming dehydrated is subtle, cumulative and brings on very uncomfortable symptoms that are difficult if not impossible to reverse on the spot. Appropriate rehydration takes hours, sometimes days, due to the slow process of fluid uptake by the cells after severe dehydration kicks in. 

Similar to nutrition & fuelling resources, there is a plethora of information available to athletes about the role of hydration and strategies to manage fluid in-take and electrolyte balance. And, to be consistent in guidelines to athletes - there is no one strategy that works for everyone. With some of the information below (and more through Precision Hydration), we want to help athletes avoid severe dehydration as well as learn how to individualize hydration over the course of ultra endurance events. 

In Part III, we will discuss the role that gut health (and global stress) plays in athletic performance. Optimized gut health is at the root of everything related to energy, wellness and assimilating all hard work you do to become a performer on and off the race course.

Let's begin by discussing "the role of sports drinks" before moving into some guidelines and helpful resources. 

WHAT DO SPORTS DRINKS ACTUALLY DO? 

Content by Precision Hydration

Today you can get thousands of different sports drinks containing all manor of things. But what are they actually good for?

Well, your body burns energy when you're exercising because of the work involved in contracting your muscles and it also loses water and electrolytes through sweat. Whilst you have stores of all of these things, all three do need replacing if you exercise reasonably intensively for long enough.

Water, sodium and calories (in different proportions) are the three main things you need to keep the body going during prolonged activity. These are the bottom line ingredients a sports drink has to contain to address your body's needs when you're working hard and sweating. Most other things are just fluff.

There are some drinks containing additives with proven performance benefits, like caffeine, that can be somewhat useful as well, but at the core of it a sports drink is really just a delivery mechanism for water, salt and sugar.

Although the exact composition varies slightly from brand to brand, all of the major 'ades' (Gator and Power) offer a 'one size fits all' solution of approximately 6% carbohydrate and between 400-500mg of sodium per litre, flavoured to make them palatable (palatability matters when it comes to selling beverages).

Interestingly, this 'industry standard' is supposedly quite a bit more sugary and less salty than the very first iterations of Gatorade; perhaps catering more to taste and carbohydrate fuelling needs than maximising their ability to hydrate. This is especially interesting given the direction in which many sports drinks recipes are moving these days.

These drinks are generally termed 'isotonic' because they contain a similar amount of molecules to the body's own fluids (in the region of 285-295 milli-osmoles per kilogram), meaning they're a similar 'thickness' to your blood. As a result, they move across the gut wall into the blood stream at a fairly decent rate.

A good way to think of these industry standard isotonic formulations is that they are designed to be a jack of all trades. They aim to balance the delivery of digestible carbohydrate energy, some electrolytes and fluids to meet all of the main requirements of an exercising body.

To that end they can work pretty well in certain circumstances, for some people. However, this means that they are in fact the masters of no particular function. Despite their apparent versatility, they neither deliver energy nor fluids and electrolytes as effectively as products designed specifically to do one or the other.

They also fail to take into account the fact that calorie, fluid and electrolyte requirements are not synchronised. People's physiology, exercise habits and confounding factors (like the weather) all vary. This means that a single product with a set composition is sadly never going to work for all people, in all scenarios.

So, whilst traditional isotonic sports drinks might work fairly well in small amounts and for shorter activities, where they really start to struggle to deliver is in situations where exercise is prolonged, sweat rates are high and/or individual needs for components like sodium are on the higher side.

That's because, during these longer and sweatier activities, the balance of what your body needs to maintain performance starts to shift away from primarily carbohydrates (as is the case in relatively short, intensive endurance events) towards a greater emphasis on fluids and salts as losses of these finite resources start to mount up over time. This is when serious dehydration or electrolyte depletion becomes more of a threat.

If you're relying entirely on an isotonic drink to replace fluids and electrolytes and you simply increase your intake to meet your escalating needs when your sweat rate is high, gastro-intestinal distress (a.k.a 'gut rot') is often the unfortunate consequence.

That's something that has derailed many endurance athletes to say the least! This 'digestive unhappiness' happens because the stomach and intestines get overwhelmed with the high levels of sugar in the drink. Beyond a certain volume, most people will start to feel sick and bloated which is clearly no good for performance.

To avoid this scenario many athletes learn - often through simple trial and error - to dilute isotonic drinks down with water on hotter days or during longer events, making them hypotonic (i.e. a lower concentration than blood). This does make them easier to consume in large volumes and so helps to solve the fluid replacement issue to a degree, but it has the unwanted side effect of diluting the already minimal levels of electrolytes found in them down to largely insignificant levels.

And this is the reason why a select few modern sports drinks (including the Precision Hydration) have moved on to a hypotonic composition.  These tend to have lower levels of carbohydrate (around a 3% solution, rather than the 6% solution in isotonic drinks) and much higher electrolyte content. 

Whilst the lower level of carbohydrates in the drinks makes them slightly less effective for fuelling, it makes a lot more sense than using isotonic drinks to try to meet all of your needs at once, but not quite fully meeting any of them.

Athletes who drink hypotonic drinks meet the lions share of their fuelling needs through consuming solid or semi solid options like gels, energy bars or 'real' foods instead, depending on the event. In other words, by largely separating your fluid/electrolyte replacement needs from your energy requirements, you can dial both in to your individual physiology rather than finding a 'happy medium'.

If preventing excessive dehydration is the main role of a sports drink, then there's a strong case for looking at the substance it is trying to replace - sweat - to help determine the optimal composition.

The interesting thing about sweat is that how much sodium you lose in it varies dramatically from person to person. Whereas the intracellular electrolytes found in sweat (potassium, calcium and magnesium) tend to be lost in very tiny and consistent amounts in sweat, sodium loss (which is predominant ion in extracellular fluid) can vary 10 fold between individuals. It ranges between around 200mg per litre (32oz) of sweat and 2,000mg/l.

And, although it's so variable between one person and the next, sweat sodium concentration remains pretty stable within an individual, so your own sweat composition can be almost permanently categorised as Low, Moderate, High or Very High.

Coupled with differences in sweat rates (driven by genetics, work rate, environmental temperature and so on) and total sweat volume losses, over time sodium output can vary 30 fold between two athletes doing the same activity.

Because sodium plays such a critical role in fluid balance, nerve impulse transmission and muscular contraction, a truly effective sports drink needs to replace it at a level that takes into account this high level of variance in losses from one person to the next.

In other words, whilst a 'one size fits all' formulation might work for some of the people some of the time, it will never work for all of the people, all of the time. And this is especially true for the 'outliers' - those people whose sweat volume and sweat sodium concentrations are either very high or very low - as their needs are not well catered for by a single formulation of drink that aims to hit the middle of the bell curve.

All of which leads us to the point we're at now with sports drinks starting to become tailored to meet the physiological requirements of the individual athlete. 

Below are a few links to some great articles on the Precision Hydration Blog addressing some of the most common questions and offering further impetus to address your own personalized hydration needs.

You can train as hard as you wish, but if you ignore the fundamental nutrition and hydration habits then you will inevitably reduce adaptations, heighten stress and risk of injury, and also experience fluctuating daily energy. 

Links:

https://www.precisionhydration.com/blogs/hydration_advice/this-guy-shaved-25-minutes-off-his-im-time-by-finally-getting-his-hydration-strategy-right

Links:

https://www.precisionhydration.com/blogs/hydration_advice/should-you-drink-water-to-thirst

Links:

https://www.precisionhydration.com/blogs/hydration_advice/how-much-dehydration-can-you-tolerate-before-your-performance-suffers

Hydration Guidelines:

As detailed in our Nutrition Article (Part I), below are guidelines for hydration. Remember, you're not just fuelling & hydrating for training and racing, you're fuelling & hydrating for performance in everyday life as well. 

For starters, think of hydration in terms of two aspects:

1. Training & Racing Hydration: Fluids consumed in training
2. Life Hydration: Fluids consumed outside of training 

Training & Racing Hydration:

• Sessions less than 60 minutes: drink to thirst with water. No need for sugary sports beverages. Women in high hormone phase or post menopausal will have dampened thirst sensation so utilizing a timer to cue when to hydrate can be beneficial.
• Sessions over 60 minutes: consume one bottle per hour on average (will vary based on humidity, heat and other factors) or approximately 10-12 ml/kg body weight/hr.
• Shoot for the higher end range when temperature is above 24 degrees Celsius.   
• Aim for 3-4% concentration of carbohydrates in solution. 
• When you consume calories, it is best to consume fluids with little hits, more consistently. Taking in large amounts of calories or fluid at one time may cause GI distress.
• Sipping every 10-15 minutes.
• The longer the session, the more important the hydration becomes.
• Electrolytes balance will be based off your Precision Hydration results. 

Life Hydration - Fluids Consumed Outside of Training:

• There is no place for sugar-laden drinks in daily life. 
• Shoot for half of your body weight in fluid ounces.
• Sip on water throughout the day.
• If training heavily, add pinch of salt, a splash of maple syrup and a little bit of citrus in your water. The sugars from the maple syrup will help pull sodium into the cells as well as provide some natural minerals. Alternatively, invest in Precision Hydration sachets for ease and customization.

PRECISION HYDRATION SWEAT TEST

As many of you will learn at the Brite Camp on Fuelling the Hungry & Thirsty Endurance Athlete in Whistler, BC (June 29th to July 1st), Precision Hydration has been championing personalized hydration for years now and it's really starting to catch on. PH offers athletes an Advanced Sweat Test - which tells you exactly how much sodium you lose in your sweat and allows us to build a personalized hydration plan around that data. They also offer a free online Sweat Test  that'll help you get started with refining your hydration strategy through some good ol' fashioned trial and error in training.

NEXT UP...

PART III - HEALTHY DIGESTION & THE ENDURANCE ATHLETE

No matter how many kilometres you log as an endurance athlete, if you are passionate about going long and performing when it counts, you will do nearly anything to keep your streak going strong. Endurance athletes are often the ones that suffer from unidentified symptoms of gut distress be it seen in the lack of quality sleep, mental or emotional instability, unsettled tummy (aka: bloating or gas) in training and life, difficulty losing weight despite training load, suppressed immune system, re-occurring injuries and poor performance outcomes.  

Taking care of your digestive health and gut functions may be the single most important step you can take to support your endurance practice and help you live your happiest and healthiest days. In Part III, we will discuss the role the gut plays in an endurance athlete's life and the signs and symptoms that signal less than optimal functioning. While we will shed light into practical solutions and options, sometimes it takes a deeper look into how symptoms are showing up in your body, mood or performance. If you feel you are under performing or losing your edge, digestive health might be the key to your next breakthrough.

Part 1 - Defining Nutrition for The Performance Athlete

In the lead up to the "Nutrition & Hydration Endurance Training Camp" hosted by Brite Coaching in Whistler, BC (June 29th to July 1st), we want to empower and educate athletes with some helpful information as it relates to fuelling and nourishing your training and daily activities.  This will be the first article of a three part series on nutrition, hydration and digestion health.

PART I - NUTRITION FROM AN ENDURANCE ATHLETE'S PERSPECTIVE

Endurance athletes are in fine company with each other as they experiment with diet cults, nutrition trends and a plethora of food choices to fuel their training and racing as well as nourish their bodies throughout the day. Nutrition to an endurance athlete is, after all, the substance that gives the body energy to perform work, recover and operate from minute to minute.

How can we better understand what our bodies need when and why?

Nutrition is a young science and seems to be changing all the time. If we dig deep into the various diet cults out there, they suggest similar benefits with a different prescription. Initially trying a new diet is novel and may produce "results" but over time the stress and social awkwardness of sticking to a specific dietary regime negates the benefits and the body revolts with signals of under nourishment and deprivation. Before digging into an entirely different rabbit hole, we will save the "diet cults" debate for another day. The purpose of this write up is to focus on the difference between nutrition and fuelling along with what the body goes through when undernourished after training or in our daily, often stress-filled, lives.

Let's boil this big topic down to two components.

For our purposes, nutrition encompasses:

Fuelling - calories consumed during training/racing and immediately following those sessions (as a recovery source).

Daily eating -main meals consisting of macronutrients (Fats, Proteins and Carbohydrates).

It's important to distinguish and isolate fuelling vs. daily eating as each have distinct habits which can make or break an athletes overall experience in endurance sport.

FUELLING

This component is everything for the training athlete and they must get it right if they are seeking performance gains throughout the season. While there are many more reasons why this is so, here are my top five:

1. Proper fuelling, quite simply, enables performance during the session. It gives you energy.
2. Proper fuelling helps the athlete manage their daily eating habits be it with portion control or food selections. The less ravenous you are the more likely you will choose wisely and consume in moderation.
3. When we train, we produce appropriate circulating stress hormones, which serve a very important role in creating adaptations in strength, endurance and power. However when the session is done, we want to reduce these stress hormones and begin the recovery process immediately. If an athlete goes without fuelling following key sessions, they face the day with elevated stress load and negate or delay recovery and thus growth.
4. Post training fuelling allows the body to recover and prepare for the very next training session.
5. Last but not least, proper fuelling is the fundamental tool in your management of energy.

CONSEQUENCES OF TRAINING STRESS & FUELLING

Let's look at a typical high achiever, corporate executive and family man training for a 7-day cycling stage race along side his uber fit and competitive buddies. Over the winter he gained some weight, yoyo-ed with his eating habits and used starvation tactics to get "things under control." The result of such behaviours is consistently poor training performances and periodic evening binges. What he may not realize is that his athletic goals are hugely tied to his fuelling habits and must be corrected before any fancy training adaptations are implemented.  Training more and eating less is rarely the answer, for anyone.

Let's look at what happens to the body after training:

TRAIN: Hard or long (or both). Boom! Body is flooded with stress hormones. No post-training refuelling. "Short on time. Rushing to the office. Will get a coffee on the way and snack later."  The body is now hyped with circulating stress due to the training session and in anticipation of a full day. During a day of work, the stress levels remain elevated and the body finds calmness or balance, aka: system overdrive.

The above sequence of events is a typical example of when an athlete trains really well (appropriate stress to the system and muscular damage) yet has not implemented sufficient recovery to benefit from the energy expenditure. Without refuelling, the muscles cannot repair and the body cannot recover. Add to that, energy stores utilized during training are not replenished having a subsequent effect on future training episodes. In the long term, what this adds up to is a loss of muscle and tissue integrity as well as supressed physiological adaptations. We can't forget to mention the yoyo effect of performance in subsequent training episodes. The psychological effect of this experience creates a heightened sense of unpredictability and mistrust in how the body will perform in future. The brain cannot trust that energy will be in the tank thanks to past experiences.

Now let's turn to how this patterning affects daily eating habits.

Post workout, the metabolic rate is high and the body is highly efficient at absorbing carbohydrate and storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscles (energy packets). Protein is also required for muscle synthesis and repair. When athletes do not replenish they go into what is often called: Athletic Starvation. The body says "oh no...in starvation mode, I must send a signal to the brain that I need calories and fast!" And the cycle of over eating on poor food choices begins. Portion control goes out the window during times when the metabolic rate is low and the carbohydrates and sugars consumed are stored as excess body fat vs. being utilized to repair tissue or reduce stress hormones.

During times of starvation, the body, the brain and energy levels go for a roller-coaster ride. When starvation becomes habitual, athletes will experience energy fluctuations, body composition issues, brain fog, magnified stress and overall lethargy. Worse, athletes start to contemplate their training plan, unmet goals and creative ways to manipulate a very obvious solution.

FUELLING SOLUTIONS

Let's look at solutions and general guidelines for the endurance athlete to not only manage the above consequence of Athletic Starvation but to also thrive in training and racing. The next seven guidelines will help every athlete steer clear of unpredictable performances as a result of missed fuelling:

• Always have a carbohydrate rich pre-workout snack of real food, low in fibre and high in nutrients 30-60mins prior to training.
• Sessions 60mins or less, do not require calories unless the athletes is very hungry.
• Sessions greater than 60mins with intensity do require caloric support. This is when sugar is your friend. Even the most low carb high fat athlete is going to consume sugar as their pre-dominant fuel source when training/racing.  In cases where the intensity is very low athletes may consume small amounts of macronutrients.
• Refuel post-workout within 30minutes no matter the workout you JUST did. And focus on JERF (just eat real food).
• Plan snacks throughout the day. Mid-morning, mid-afternoon and perhaps before bed.
• Daily meals need to consistent of all three macronutrients (attach 5 Rules).
• Evening meals should largely consist of plants, fats and protein with less emphasis on starchy carbohydrates.

The spin off benefits of implementing supportive fuelling habits around daily eating will ultimately help athletes experience consistent improvements in performance along with enhanced recovery from session to session not mention improved sleep quality and hormone balance.

DAILY EATING: MEALS & SNACKS OUTSIDE OF TRAINING SESSIONS

The goal of daily eating is to support global health. We want to maximize real foods that are minimally packaged and processed, nutrient dense, made of mixed macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein and fat) clear of diet cults and evangelism. A good way to think of daily eating is "mostly good" with everything in moderation without elimination, weighing foods or living like a monk. However, daily eating habits will only be effective if you get your fuelling right and nailing your fuelling is wildly influential on your daily eating habits. The two components are intrinsically linked in a symbiotic relationship.

Daily eating supports:

• Your platform of global health
• Your immune system & resilience
• Your cellular health by providing essential vitamins & minerals for bodily functions
• Your muscular and tissue health (maintenance and repair)
• Your energy management throughout your day

And yet...and yet...endurance athletes tend to share the following debilitating daily eating habits:

Do not consume enough calories to support the training load.

Select the wrong types of calories to support their training and health demands with an over reliance of starchy carbs and sugars.

Integrate "fuelling" sources into their daily feeding windows such as sugary drinks, bars and bloks instead of nutrient dense food.

Plain and simple, small tweaks in daily eating will go a long way if an athlete focused solely on eating real food, mainly plants.

MANAGING MEALS

We often think of daily eating as three square meals throughout the day. Athletes need more flexibility in how their eating habits are arranged. As a guiding principle, athletes should establish breakfast as the largest and most important, carbohydrate and protein rich meal of the day. It may also serve as a fuelling meal for an upcoming workout. As the day progresses, meals should taper in amounts and shift towards less starchy carbs (vegetables) with more emphasis on protein, good oils and fats. The less polarized your meals are throughout the day, the more consistent your energy levels will become.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If athletes take nothing else away from the guiding principles in this article, take this one: let calorie-counting go. Drop it today to focus 100% on habit generation. Zero in on macronutrients during mealtime and snacks while limiting high sugar foods and starchy carbohydrates. Think global health vs. immediate gratification with consequences down the line.

Nutrition (fuelling and daily eating) is a massive component in potential to perform. Training is an ongoing performance journey and therefore your eating should be too. Cement habits and always nail the fuelling. Figure out where you fall short in your nutrition habits and address those before revamping your training or diving into evangelism.  Often times, athletes with excess body fat need to train less and eat more to readjust their stress hormones and let the body know it's ok to shed fat.

Fuelling is a performance mindset. Daily eating is the platform of global health.

Part II will focus on hydration and how it too is affected by and affects nutrition and absorption of calories.

If you have questions about your own nutrition, fuelling, eating habits or how to join the Brite Coaching Training Camp, please contact me at christine@brite.coach or visit our website www.brite.coach

THE TRAINING LOG

As a coach to high achievers seeking ultra endurance dominance, the two most asked question I have for my athletes are, “how did you feel?” and “are you motivated to train?”

Sometime ago you signed up for an ultra endurance race, be it a triathlon, a cycling stage race, an adventure race or maybe an ultra-marathon. The nature of the race, doesn’t matter. The countdown to the race doesn’t matter. What does matters is that you had the desire, intention and discipline of doing that event well.  Over the winter months, you went through the motions of training letting the “auto-uploads” log your daily training, thought about a comment you could write but you’ll do it later or just allowed the numbers to speak for themselves assuming that was good enough. Life got full, time was precious and conditions were undesirable for you to find two minutes to write helpful observations in your training log. Winter training seemed to matter less to you. "Champions are built in the off-season” doesn’t apply to you.

The pivotal ingredients to becoming a better, stronger, faster and smarter athlete are daily reflections and the desire to train, full stop. Numbers and data help us quantify the dancing body and thinking mind.

How an athlete resonates with the training process is far more important to potential progress than mailing in a half-baked effort. How an athlete applies each training experience to a future session or a target race is far more beneficial than coloring boxes green. Simply going through the physical motions is the perfect path to unpleasant plateaus and staleness.

Training logs are the window into an athlete's mind, heart, emotions, fears, desire, motivation and spirit. Since ultra-endurance athletes spend exhaustive amounts of financial, physical and emotional resources on and in their sport, finding two minutes every day to look inward and reflect seems like a worthy effort given the return on investment. The discipline and habit of logging notes after each session is incredibly more constructive use of time than that five minutes spent creating a social media post about your run stats or FTP results, which are Just Not That Interesting.

We lost a running legend last week, Sir Roger Bannister. Best be sure, Roger did not have a social media feed, an ANT+ Garmin nor any fancy training software. His access to training devices was minimal but his reflections on what it took to run a mile in 4 minutes or less was highly calculated with observations and self-awareness.  We can also be sure he was communicating daily with his mentors and coaches on how each session felt, how his body was recovering, how he was managing injuries and how he would apply his practices when it counts.

Have a look at an example of Bill Rodgers’ 1974 training log https://runningscience.co.za/elite-athletes-training-log/bill-rodgers/

“Leg a little achey.”

“I’m getting back up there!! Ya-hoo”

“Did not run twice today. Too tired.”

Sometimes a few simple words says it all. Sometimes a deep dive into the color is required.  Write whatever helps you express your experience succinctly and with insight. With this new age of smart devices, software programs, entertainment gaming and social media access, athletes tend to escape reflections with technology challenges, Zwift malfunctions, fallen GPS signals, dead batteries or syncing issues.

Knowing and understanding effort is invaluable to athletes seeking performance. Devices help us quantify what was already qualified. When we can accurately bring the two worlds together, we gain a deeper look into the complete experience.

Taking time to write your training observations opens doors not only for your coach to coach you with more insight and understanding of you as a human being with budding athletic potential and goals but it also engages you with the process towards excellence and personal greatness. To recognize, to be aware, to be present in the moment and to connect with the chain of events in a written format is a fundamental part of endurance training.

So I ask you, “How did that feel?” “What was your desire to train today?” Write it. Daily.

IT’S JUST NOT THAT INTERESTING

What was once a new riveting way to connect and communicate is now very much commonplace. What was once a past time is now irresistible and addictive. Seeking attention and getting accolades feels so good. Checking your account likes and comparing it to others feels productive. But does it really? Is it real? Is your image sustainable? Is it helping you develop into the athlete you initially set out to become? Have you noticed a growing desire for likes on your activities? Do you think people care THAT much? What’s the purpose of being an avid SM poster?

Social media is certainly here to stay and how we use it can dramatically affect our true experience with sport, training sessions, race performances and setting expectations.  Crafty titles on Strava or training selfies occasionally have a time and place, however, one need only observe accomplished and high level performers – elite or Olympic level athletes or business influencers – to notice that their messages are vastly different from the average Joe. They come from a place of passion and perseverance with a confident and sometimes vulnerable voice. Rarely would one sense any form of self-pimping, self-seeking or self-deprecating meaning from true leaders and achievers. What can we glean from them?

As written about this past summer, perseverance comes from passion. When pursued with internal motivation and drive vs. external accolades or attention seeking posts, people (everyone’s included) open space to experience fully the path they are on and the obstacles they will encounter. When all you think about is the title of your next Strava post or your photo shopped post-run Instagram the intention has been lost entirely.

From a coaching standpoint, social media has zero bearing on how an athlete is doing in the larger context of goals. What matters to a coach is rarely, if ever, going to show up on social media. 

So what does matter?

What matters is how an athlete truly feels in mind and body be it energy, sleep, motivation to train, fears, mind games, disruption to schedule, accountability, compliance, consistency, willingness to go deep, and injury resistance.  The juicy details are difficult to articulate because you must look under the hood vs. living on dopamine hits every 5 minutes. What matters takes thought and deep cognitive energy.  

Here’s what we all know to be true…

When the gun goes you are the only one on the line. No followers, no cheerleaders, no arch nemesis. It is only after the gun goes when athletes realize how well prepared they are for the mental fortitude required to give their best effort on the day that counts. Imagine dedicating your entire social media time and creative title crafting to mentally preparing for race day and execution planning? Imagine the possibilities.

Let social media serve you instead of hold you hostage. Far more inspiring and admirable are athletes that post to help others, spread important messages or share real life experiences. Frankly, no one really cares that much about your watts, how far you ran or what ungodly hours you swim.  People care about authentic experiences that not only enriched your life but theirs too.