A great way to learn from your races, is to write a race report. The act of writing about your day, forces you to reflect on what happened and hopefully learn, what went well and what did not.

To get the most out of this exercise, I always wait until at least a week after the race is over, before starting my report.  I do this, because it allows my emotions to subside, and enables a critical review of how everything actually went. 

Immediately after the race, I find my thoughts are very much focused on what went ‘wrong’ and how I could have done better.  It is important to identify opportunities for improvement, but it is equally important, to not be super critical.  No race is going to be perfect.

Time also allows me to put a race into perspective.  My race at Ironman Chattanooga is a great example of this.  Immediately after finishing, all I could think about, was how disappointing my run was.  I know I can do much better. 

A week later however, and I am looking at the race as a whole.  Ironman Chattanooga was a 15 minute PR for me and the first time I had gone under 12 hours for a full distance race.  A week later, I know that I had a great overall race, not just a race with a bad run.  I now realize that I am continuing to get better, and what’s more, I still have areas where I can improve.

I’ll document all this in my race report.  The new opportunities provide motivation for next year and by writing them down, I will ingrain those into my thinking moving forward.  

My Ironman Chattanooga race report will be published later this week.  It will be published on my race report page.