Help yourself stay disciplined in training - triathlon & running

oliverbridge7
Nov 1
3 min read

Updated: Nov 5

How to run faster? How to run better? Triathlon and running advice for training and racing from things I have learned over 15 years of trial and error, lots of reading, talking and getting to a place I never thought possible when I started.

At the start of a plan or shortly after signing up for a challenge we have high motivation and training starts easy. However, as you continue it can be increasingly difficult to stay disciplined with that golden virtue that is key to achievement - consistency. Firstly, it makes total sense that you might have dips in motivation as training continues and builds, this can be because of :

Repetitiveness of training
Accumulated fatigue making training harder
Accumulated fatigue making just getting up harder
Hitting a plateau of little or no improvement

Here are some top tips to stay consistent and make completing the daily training harder.

#1: Put Blocks into your training plan, with defined times to recovery more and consciously do different things.

Write about this here more:

Going hard all the time and having no real difference in your training week to week for a long period makes it incredibly difficult to keep going. Blocks of 4 weeks with 3 weeks building and 1 week easier to absorb your training feels like a treat every time you reach it. Also structuring things in blocks allows you to think about focussing on different things block to block and make significant differences to your training sessions that feels like something new and keeps you engaged.

#2: Plan over a year in advance

Having things arranged and certain a long time ahead is a great practice to keep disciplined and motivated. After your challenge if you have no idea of what is next it can take a long time to sign-up and you can get into a real lull and lose the momentum and routine you had.

#3: Don't just do one race

Easy as it comes, hard by the end! Depending on your level of fatigue, you can take these slightly easier than your target pace.

#4: Get ready the night before

Wake-up early with heavy fatigue, bleary eyes and procrastinate too long that the time you had in your mind for training you planned is geting less and less until finally it's not possible or worth it. A way to help this is just to take 5-10 minutes the night before getting your gear ready, in or by a bag. The two main benefits are not only the very obvious that you have less to do but also you have made an active commitment to yourself already by the time spent getting things ready.

#5: Training Programs (or Checklists)

I'm a long time user of TrainingPeaks, same as nearly every single pro triathlete and cannot speak highly enough of it. I will go into the details of TP in another piece but fundamentally the practice of plotting your training and then a way to track it / tick it off like a classic to-do list is really helpful to A) make that commitment to yourself in planning and B) to keep the sense of achievement ongoing and always on.

#6: Don't just do one race

Unless you're a pro with a particular long distance race that you're solely focussed on then devoting yourself to only training and no racing for months I don't believe gives you the best sense of fulfilment, is very high risk and doesn't give you experience.

Firstly, you have no idea what could happen on your big race, a puncture, an injury, hot weather you're not used to and then everything can seem like it was wasted. Also
Secondly, with endurance and particularly triathlon and running can compliment each other as well as different disciplines so it's quite easy to mix running races and triathlons, have multiple goals and potentially tick off lots of achievements in the same period.
Lastly, you can still keep your big race and challenge as THE event and goal that you perhaps only care about but doing others before is great mental preparation, adrenaline anticipation and routine practice.
Triathlon particularly there are so many things to think about the days before, night before, morning of and during that it's easy to forget.