Triathlon Coaching: 2024 Season Review

For most athletes, the 2024 season is finished. Consigned to the history books and training logs. Only the medals, the memories, the finish line photos (and hopefully the race reports – hint, hint!) remain.

Was it the season you had in mind at the beginning of the year? How did it go? Were you pleased with it?

Now is the time of year to take a step back and think about your 2023/24 season.

A season review.

We’re often not very good at this. We’d rather be running or pedalling or practising tumble turns. However, spending 30 minutes now, could make a big difference to your 2024/25 season.

Here are a few prompts to get you thinking about your year, so you enter 2024/25 with a greater understanding of you, your training, your racing and what you might need to do differently. We could delve deeper. Use this as your starting point and go from there!

Questions To Ask Yourself

Did you achieve what you wanted to?
How did the season compare with your goals at the start of the year?
Did you do everything you could – given your life circumstances and the way life panned out during this time – to achieve your goals?
Did you get the best out of yourself?
Importantly, did you enjoy your season?

Training Time

It’s important to look beyond the race results, the times, the performances, and reflect on your training and the processes. Take a look at your Training Peaks account. Scroll through and see how it looks.

Did your training plan / coaching meet your needs? Or did you have to try and fit your life around it?
Did you struggle to fit your sessions in – or did you manage to complete most of your planned sessions?
Were you consistent with your training over the year?
If you did miss sessions, were they the same type of sessions? For example, was it always the long bike that got missed, or the interval run?
Did training conflict with family / work / life – or was it mostly smooth and balanced?

Training

This is less about training time, and more about the process of training. Training serves many purposes – to help improve, to prepare for races, to enjoy – amongst many other things.

Did you (mostly) enjoy it?
Did you make improvements during the year?
Did you pick up any injuries that sidelined you?
Were you mostly fresh and ready for sessions – or were you fatigued a lot of the time?

Races

You’ve probably taken the time to reflect on your races already, but perhaps think of ‘races’ as a global term – so taking all of your races together this year, how did they go? How well did you perform across the year.

How did they go?
Did you race well?
Did race performances reflect the work you put in to your training? In other words, did you perform to your trained potential on race day?

Growth

As athletes, we gain experience as we progress. We often talk about an athletes ‘athletic age’. This is about how long an athlete has been in the sport, but also how much experience they have in training and racing, the knowledge they’ve acquired, the wisdom they possess.

Did you learn new things this year?
Specifically, did you learn things about yourself?
Is there anything you do better now, than you did last year?
What did you learn about your training and racing?

Overall

Each year should build on the previous year. We gain experience, we improve, we develop perspectives, we know more about ourselves. When we talk about being a better athlete than the previous year, we could answer this by reflecting on training and racing times, yes, but we could also refer to improved race execution, better day to day habits, improved mindset, more resilient, more robust and less prone to injuries. There are lots of ways to define this.

Are you a better athlete than last year? (Better doesn’t necessarily mean faster)
How have you developed?
What were your strengths as an athlete this year?

Moving Forward

The whole point of this exercise is to reflect and to learn. Doing the same things over and over, if they are the ‘wrong’ things, is not ideal. A bit of self-reflection, a conversation or two with your coach about your thoughts, some positive changes and you will give yourself a much greater chance to be a better athlete in 2025.

What three things will you do differently in 2024/25?
What three things are you building on

What Now?

Take some time to reflect.

Instead of scrolling through your phone later, get a notebook out and write a few thoughts down. It’s cathartic. It really helps. You want to improve as an athlete? Or at least improve your experience in the sport? Take a few minutes and take control of the process! As a coach, I would be absolutely delighted if an athlete took the time to do a season review – from their perspective.

If you want to chat any of this season review through, if you want to talk about your experiences, if you want to get my thoughts on your year, if you would like me to review your reflections, I would be delighted. You know where I am!

Message me to discuss further.