How to Plan your Season

So you’ve just got selected in the race lottery, or you finally committed to signing up for that race you wanted to do, your season is planned right? You’ve got 6 or 8 months to prepare and train, plenty of time right? Well, not always. Especially for long ultra distance races, planning a race season even for one goal race, can take a bit of thought and a lot of preparation.

So let’s backtrack a little bit to setting things up right. With the athletes I coach, we like to start by identifying goals - weather that’s a distance goal, a race destination or a time goal, then we fill in the season from there.

But how do you identify goals? I like to start with the ‘why’ behind certain goals or races - maybe i’d like to work on speed, so I choose a flatter/faster race or series of races. Maybe I want to work on climbing building into a big 100 mile race. Once I’ve identified the big goals, it makes it easier to pick other race (say B-goal races) or even training runs that align with that goal vs finding a goal that fits the races you are doing. Plus, having multiple goals, helps break up the year and mentally not put too much pressure on your A goal.

Now, I’m a multi-sport athlete, and some of the athletes I coach are also balancing two sports -either racing or just because they like to mix it up. So, how do we balance a two sport races seasons, most commonly the skiers + runner combos and the runner + cyclist combos.  For me it again starts with the question about your goals with each sport, if it is to truly race both, or use one to compliment the other. If it is to race both, then periodizing your year according to each sport, and making sure you adjust the specificity of your training to each sport.

Of course, even when goals and races are selected, sometimes we have to change them. But hopefully this provides a bit of an insight into planning out a season. I also find it helpful to work with a coach, and if you need more help setting goals and planning your season, book a session with me, and we can figure it out together. You can also check out the latest Trail Society episode, a podcast I co-host, where we discuss season planning in more detail.