Making a Comeback!
Here coach Philip discusses how to make a comeback. After several years of racing as one of the top age groupers, his personal circumstances changed, he picked up an injury and chose to do more coaching than training. Though he is hardly moving back up the rankings, he is enjoying training more again. Read about his advice and experiences.
With many of us using the lockdown environment as a way to get back their fitness, it seems a perfect opportunity to talk about comebacks. Sports audience love a good comeback, and the arenas are full of stories of the old guard who come back for one more fight, match or race.
The great thing about triathlon is that you can skip an age-group and return to race again in your later years. I once thought it would be fun to try and race in every age-category at the world champs. Well, I certainly have some work to do to make that happen before I move up to the next category and realistically that isn’t on the horizon. Before I terrorise Coach Alan with the threat of coming back to racing, let’s talk about coming back to the sport and some of my own experiences of restarting.
Accept the reason you stopped before and work through it
I stopped being able to be competitive due to injury, no clear goal and prioritisation. Other people may have different reasons: injury, other commitments, boredom, the fulfilment of goals or purposes, pregnancy, other life stresses and a host of other factors.
The first thing to do is to recognise what stopped you and mitigate the chance of it stopping you again! If it was an injury, fix it. If you struggled with time, do you have time now? If you struggled with motivation, what has motivated you now? Without solving the problem, you end up, resulting in the same place as before, which will only exacerbate frustrations.
Secondly, you need to make a clear and conscientious decision of what you want to achieve by coming back to your sport and make sure you set that up. If you are aiming to get back to winning races again, then set clear SMART goals to make it happen and remember the R stands for realistic. Don’t set yourself up to fail straight away!
The hardest first step is building training consistency. Focus on the number of sessions you are doing per week, not how far or how long your training week has become. Extend that into each of the sports. Who cares if you only ran for 20 mins. If you ran three times in the week, and you did it 20 mins at a time, that is a big success. Celebrate it, and try and do the same the week after. Eventually, training three times per week will be a new habit that you can build from and then increase the duration of training.
Build your self-awareness
You have to recognise that you are a new athlete with a lot of experience. That isn’t the same as a new athlete, and you certainly aren’t the same athlete as you once were. There will undoubtedly be frustrations along the way, but you have a host of experiences which will make a big difference. This is your second (or third) chance to “get it right”. What do you want to do differently? How can you avoid the same mistakes, what worked well?
It is interesting to reflect on what you could do, but don’t dwell on it. It may be both motivating or devastating to compare what you can do now to what you once could do! For example, you may know your previous running paces or power numbers. It may be inspiring to see that you are only a few seconds off your previous easy running pace. Equally, it may be disheartening looking at your recent FTP test, knowing you were once able to hold that number for an IRONMAN bike leg and run off it, but now you can barely hold it for 20 minutes.
Recognise that you are a different shape! You may be slightly heavier and move differently than before. That is fine and will tend more towards what you were able to do before. But don’t force it! Often it is easy to shy away from the raw truth that you aren’t as fast as you once were. It is easy to avoid races, time trials, testing, or riding with faster people as you may end up with your own personal embarrassment where you lose face to yourself only. Swallow this pill as the minute you do, and you can start looking forwards from the line in the sand you have just drawn. The only person who will even take notice is your ego, that isn’t a good enough reason to avoid it.
Recall your performance skills
If you are coming back to the sport, remember all the mental skills you learnt when training before and use them to fast track your performance. Put together a balanced training routine, remember the lessons you learned about your own body’s tells and signs of fatigue, be efficient with your training and make every session count.
Your training in previous years isn’t wasted. You start slow, but you can accelerate back up to a “good-ish” standard quite quickly. Swimming, or running where technique plays a lot comes back faster than you may have realised and the repetition of cycling and running will mean you can quickly begin moving like you once were able to. Then it is a matter of re-training and building endurance.
The fact you are willing to get back into the sport means, you love to challenge yourself and no doubt you will find yourself racing others, or putting the hammer down to see what you can do. Enjoy those moments. Equally, use your knowledge of racing to gain the edge where you are let down on fitness! Your athlete is the mind; the body is merely the vessel. Your vessel may need an upgrade, but there is no reason that you can’t be race savvy. I know from my own experience leading groups around the Algarve that knowing when to burn your matches can be the difference between spending the whole ride on the rivet or being able to have an enjoyable day out!
Use new metrics
The world has moved on in the past age-group bracket (5 years). Zwift, Running power meters and aerodynamic tri suits all mean new things to explore and learn from. Personally, I found running with power joyous as I just focussed on new power numbers and almost forgot about my previous paces that I could (or now couldn’t) do. I just got excited about this new metric! Spend time doing the same sport differently – hit the trails on the bike or running, spend more time doing open water swimming. Suddenly, you are consistently training throughout the week, increasing fitness and developing endurance, and you have no unfavourable comparisons. Knowing the times you did on segments, or your previous PBs may be motivating or disappointing for you – so avoid them if you need to. Look at PB’s this year, and see the improvements you are making now; enjoy this new journey.
Above all, keep enjoying the sport. You may never reach the levels you used to have, but then you may be better than ever before. Look forwards and don’t look backwards and celebrate every little success. Before long you will be moving better and being consistent in your training, and suddenly you will be back and training like before - then who knows what your next step is, that is only up to you!!
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