Photo: David finishing sub-9 hours at the Quelle Challenge in Roth, Germany in 2007 (Photographer: Courtney Johnson)

This past year was an outstanding year for me as an athlete - I set personal best times in both the marathon and Ironman-distance triathlon while winning the Vineman Triathlon overall at the age of 36, an age when most athletes would be considered “over the hill.” There were a number of things that enabled me to improve after many years of competing in these events, so I cannot attribute my success to any one thing, but I can attribute my success to how I systemically approached my performance.

In order to compete in an type of sports event, and especially an endurance event like triathlon or marathon, there are four necessary and important components to consider:

Although not necessarily mutually exclusive, the four components provide a framework to bucket all of the “things” that enable us to compete in an event. The list of “things” obviously changes from one event to another with a marathon, for example, involving more simple equipment choices than a triathlon with its swim, bike and run.

I like to use pictures to explain and visualize concepts, so let’s assume that each of the four performance components can have a maximum score of 5, which represents the best of what that component can possibly be. For example, a score of “5″ in “Execution” means that you execute your event perfectly as planned from start to finish with no mistakes. If all four components are at an optimal level, then the picture would look like a Big Blue Square (or diamond if you prefer):

Image: The Optimal Big Blue Square

Note the perfect symmetry of the shape, representing the ideal conditions for each component to be at in order to perform optimally.

Truthfully, it is hard to create a perfect Big Blue Square. If, for example, an athlete is under a significant amount of stress from increased work obligations, which impacts his or her ability to focus (i.e. lowers his mental state) while cutting into workout time and sleep (i.e. lowers physical fitness), then the graph might be skewed to something like this:

Image: The Big Blue Skew

The key point that I want to illustrate is that if the scores any of the component(s) are less than maximum, then an athlete will not have an optimal race. True, the athlete may still do well in a race, but he or she could have done better if an optimal state across all four dimensions existed.

Therefore, in order to achieve the best possible race day performance, the goal should then be to reach an optimal or near-optimal score in all four components leading up to an event. Drawing the picture and assigning a value provides a visual image of how each component ranks relative to each of the other components and can be used as a tool to identify where one should focus on making changes or improvements.

Consequently, training and racing for a multi-sport event essentially becomes an optimization problem to create our own perfect square across the four dimensions. We each have our own unique constraints and limitations like fitness background, genetics, time availability, ability to recover from a workout, motivation level, equipment aerodynamics, tolerance for training volume, etc. The challenge for each of us then is to maximize our potential against our own unique conditions. We can all choose to take proactive action achieve our unique performance potential….whatever that may be.

To be continued….

Train safe,

David

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David B. Glover
Writer, Athlete, Coach and Race Director
Author of Full Time and Sub-Nine
Personal Web: www.davidglover.net
Business Web: www.enduranceworks.net

©2008 David B. Glover

© 2008 David B. Glover