11 ways to be successful in triathlon in 2018

Ready for the triathlon season of your life? Not yet? Read on for your first step in getting ready for the race.

Take a calculated risk to go faster for swimming, biking, and running instead of crouching in your status quo running routine.

Don’t wait to step up your effort and improve your running tactics when you see others outperforming you. Commit to getting started on a challenging and successful triathlon journey today. Here are 11 ways you will be a more competitive triathlete to achieve success in your specific career goals.

1. Train with a specific set of custom triathlon workouts for the best return on your investment of time for performance results. Continuing to do the same activities will produce the same results. Make your changes from now on.

2. Spend 80% of your effort eliminating time wasters that impede progress toward your goals. These can include writing exercises, waiting for others to show up for training, analyzing nonsensical metrics, eliminating concerns that don’t add value and weird confidence, and other time-wasting actions.

3. Pre-exemption disorders, eliminate potentially problem areas in advance: lack of stamina, untested nutrition options, incomplete checklists, postponement of race entries, indecision accommodation arrangements, etc.

4. Take advantage of downtime from work, sports, and social media. Your body and mind recover stronger after dedicated rest, recovery, and rejuvenation. Take a deep breath, exhale, and relax a bit too.

5. Focus on doing new to progress toward your goals. You are not solving problems. The repair is for pets. New workouts. New career tactics. Barrow largely from successful triathletes more advanced in their travels than you.

6. Eliminate regression. Adopt polarity management in your training plan.

7. Training should be a process mindset, not a project. Let sport become part of your lifestyle.

8. Get people to follow you to your sweet spot. Don’t be passively at the sweet spot of your competition. Explore solutions to extend your key points to other disciplines.

9. Overcome the challenges. Gain with limited pain. Take advantage of opportunities to raise your pain threshold with challenging workouts that push you physically and mentally.

10. Make sure you and your coach are in sync with your training and race plans. Make sure you and your follow are in sync with social and tripartite family plans! Communicate plans. Honor the limits. Comply with commitments.

11. Achieve and celebrate small victories throughout your practice milestones, local races, and all-inclusive family outings. Keep moving toward higher goals as well. Enjoy greater accomplishments and celebrations as you become more successful.

Here is an example of how I changed training plans from one year to the next. Physical training for a second Ironman triathlon followed a similar seasonal path to the previous year. Unlike Ironman Utah when I approached the race like project management, the Ironman Coeur d’Alene (CDA) training commitment didn’t consume my life, just training time. After all the mental effort of thinking about Ironman Utah from registration to race day, Ironman CDA flowed through my mind like just another triathlon.

Becoming an Ironman required following a process rather than managing a project. Trainings, part of the process. Motivation to complete training and compete in the race, parts of the process. Swimming training with a Master’s group, competing with others, and a supportive family; all parts of the process. Challenging my body physically and mentally were more components of the process.

However, the training template from the previous year I added an extra day of swimming when possible and a 50-60 mile bike ride midweek, early in the morning, from the Arizona State University campus to Fountain. Hills and vice versa for additional bike riding. Specific weight lifting exercises for arms, back, stomach and legs were also added. During the training timeline, mileage increased, stabilized, and decreased. I did five races while improving training prior to the Ironman CDA to gain some speed, build stamina, participate in pre-race mental preparation, and gain experience to deal with race day anxieties. I followed the talk of working out the 13 week training plan until Ironman.

Take inventory of your toolkit now. Purge obsolete tools and replace them with new concepts. Compare specifically what you are doing now and what you might be doing differently based on the 11 items outlined above. Learn the behaviors you need to reach your full potential. Check your base physical condition. Challenge all your mental abilities. Get started preparing for your season today.

What other changes are you making to your 2018 career plans?