HSBC Triathlon Series

How do you know how you did in the race? by Richard Pady

Triathlon is a challenging sport to analyze results for an individual athlete. So often I have athletes come to me after a race and are frustrated about their times or their speed/pace in the swim or on the bike / run. The reality is your time or speed itself cannot tell you much about how well you did in the race. Remember that courses are not always 100% bang on and especially in the swim if a buoy moves just a little it will through your time and pace off what you expect making you believe you don’t swim well. Also weather is another major factor that destroys time, speed, and pace. If you normally look at your place within your age group it at times is not even a good indicator of performance if the same guys are not racing every weekend. Remember performance is how well you did in the race. So how do you analyze your results.

As a coach this is what I have used and found it very helpful:

Step 1 - Take the average time for the top 3 athletes (in minutes)

Step 2 – Take your time from the SAME race (in minutes)

Step 3 – Divide the average time for the top 3 by your time.

Example:

The average time for the top 3 athletes = 119minutes
Your time was 135minutes.
119/135 = .88 so you were within 12% of the winning time

This tells you how close you are to the top three times. If your goal is to get faster in 2007 you want to see this percentage get closer and closer to 100% of the top 3 times (don’t we all wish).

Step 4 – If you want to compare one race to another do Steps 1-3 for both races, then the race that you were closer to the top 3 times was your better race. You can also break it down for the swim, bike, and run for closer analysis.

So next time when someone asks you how you did in the race, I hope this technique helps.

Happy Racing

Richard Pady

If you have any questions regarding any of these drills or techniques please feel free to contact a coach at Team HR.by email at info@healthyresults.ca