Why your “bad” race might be your best yet.

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TRAINING BREAKDOWN

“That’s endurance sport: brutal and beautiful.”

By Emma O’Toole

Hi there,

You train for months, sometimes years.

You make sacrifices, rearrange your life, and build everything around one date.

And then, in a moment, it can all change:

• A puncture at mile 10.

• Cramp on the final climb.

• The weather turning against you.

• A momentary lapse in concentration causing a trip/crash.

• Or just waking up, but your legs forgot to.

That’s endurance sport: brutal and beautiful.

That date is race day and you’re at risk of letting it define you as a runner, cyclist and triathlete.

Your race is not a full reflection of your training, it’s a snapshot. A single photo in a much bigger album so to speak. It’s the end-product of hundreds of decisions and uncontrollable factors, all condensed into a few hours.

Your training is the bigger story.

It’s the early alarms you didn’t snooze. The sessions you finished when you wanted to stop. The juggling of many commitments. The fitting your training sessions in when your child’s at scouts in the evening. The rainy-day rides. The slow, patient recovery days.

Those are the things that make you an endurance athlete, not just the time on your watch when you cross a timing mat at the finish line.

Even the best in the world get it “wrong.”

We’ve all seen it, Olympic champions who blow up mid-race, Tour de France leaders who lose minutes on a bad stage, marathon greats who step off the course when the legs give way. Triathletes who get corner wrong and find themselves kissing the tarmac.

Their talent doesn’t vanish and their training isn’t suddenly worthless, or “wrong” because of that race.

They simply had a bad day.

And it’s what they do next that defines them.

The best regroup, come back and more often than not, they’re stronger for it.

This is where true strength comes in.

Yes, the physical kind: strong glutes, hamstrings, calves, and a resilient core that helps you run and ride faster for longer whilst also staving off injury.

But also the mental kind, knowing that one tough race doesn’t erase your months of preparation, that your worth isn’t pinned to a number on a results sheet.

Physical strength helps you get up the hill. Mental strength helps you come back when the hill beats you.

So what do you do when a race doesn’t go your way:

1. Step back: Give yourself 24-48 hours before you analyse anything.

2. Review the bigger picture: Look at your training block, your progress markers, your consistency.

3. Identify what you can control: nutrition, pacing, mindset.

4. Let go of the rest: the weather, mechanicals, random bad days, (they happen to us all).

5. Re-frame the acronyms: DNF, DNS and PB and take those with you moving forwards.

None of these 5 steps are easy to do, especially alone. This is where I encourage you to lean on your support network, a great community of other endurance athletes who just “get it” and have likely been there, and/or a coach who can help you - especially with steps 2, 3 and 5.

What makes a great endurance athlete is one who is able to line up again, and again, and again, the athlete who isn’t undone by one race and this means building both the body and the mind that is able to withstand the knocks:

• Strength work to keep you physically robust.

• Consistent endurance training to build your engine.

• A mindset that knows your value goes beyond your last result.

• And bad races, good races, mediocre races that all give you experience.

One race, (whether it went brilliantly or fell apart) is just a snapshot, and what makes you the runner, cyclist and triathlete that you are is the months of preparation, your discipline, the training moments only you know about, and how you handle setbacks.

I’ll leave you with this: a bad race is part of a bigger story that’s still being written… and one that I promise you will come with some spectacular moments and highs that will have you feel on cloud nine. This “bad race” whilst right now is hurting, might just be the most valuable experience you’ll ever have for your future training and racing.

This week in our wonderful free community, I shared the details of a race that fell apart for me whilst wearing the GBR skinsuit and other amazing runners and cyclists have been bravely sharing their “bad” race stories! Check it out for ongoing support with your training.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Emma x

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