It's ok to fail

Goal Setting

Last year I wrote a blog about mental strength and my thoughts on its importance within our sport. Within that blog was a section on how to break down your targets into manageable chunks. This is so that you make it easier and less daunting to manage your goals and targets. If you think about revising for an exam, you don't try to memorise everything that you've learned or everything you think you should know on that subject matter all in one go. You break it down into small chunks and you work on that until you start to build up your knowledge and get ready for the exam. 

Similarly to academic progress, in order to progress as an athlete, if you want to really improve it's important to set yourself some goals. You may have a long term goal that may take a few years to reach, but within that you have to have short term goals as well and ideally these should be goals that will really push your limits and goals that you will sometimes fail at. They can be goals that you either set yourself in training sessions or in races, or goals that your coach will set for you.

Learn how to accept the pain

Part of our role as coaches is to identify areas that we can see where an athlete or club member can improve on. We've all got them, even the best triathletes in the world like the Brownlee's, Daniela Ryf, Jan Frodeno etc have all got areas that they can improve on. Granted, at that level of performance, the margins for gain are much smaller than they are for the majority of athletes of our level but they're still striving to find an advantage over a fellow competitor or to push themselves further and faster.

As a loose rule, I try to construct training plans so that they work out at about 80% - 20% with about 80% of the sessions being completed in zone 2 and the other 20% being really hard sessions. At the end of the day, triathlon is an endurance or aerobic sport, hence the necessity to really build the engine that we're so reliant on. Yes, we might be blowing and really fatigued at the end of a longer race, but there's no way that anyone can race a triathlon if they're working anaerobically for the whole race. 

Daniela Ryf said in an interview a few months ago that although they do so much work in zone 2, the sessions where they're really pushing themselves need to be really taking them out of their comfort zone. She said if it's not hurting, you're not pushing hard enough. If you learn how to push your limits in training, it makes it a bit easier for you to either break out of a pack during a race, to drop that annoying swimmer that's constantly tapping your toes, or to gap the runner that's on your shoulder and breathing down your neck. This is really where the really hard sessions come into their own. An analogy that I heard for this was on a recent podcast were they called it "visiting the well". Meaning when we have to really delve into what we perceive as our reserves, if we do it in training and constantly push the limits of those reserves in the hard sessions, the easier it is to push yourself in a race, when you're in a dark place and hurting. 

A study was done relatively recently with some track athletes. They were told to run a very hard 800m. Their times were recorded and they were given time to rest and recover before being told to do it again. What the scientists found was that nearly all of them ran the second 800m faster than the first one. At first they thought that this was because their pacing strategy had improved, but when they looked at it in more detail, it wasn't that, it was just that they simply ran faster. The main theory behind why this happened is that either consciously or subconsciously  they mentally accepted how hard the first time they ran and how much it hurt, but their brains thought "that wasn't too bad, we can push a bit harder next time". Again this links to part of my mental toughness blog were I talk about how your brain will give up before your body and the importance to train the brain to let your body to be able to push itself harder and further.

Failure IS an option

Going back to my original point of goal setting. It's important to realise that when we fail, it's actually ok, as long as it doesn't become a frequent occurrence. When we set a goal it can be anything. It can be to go a bit further in a run session. It can be to push yourself a bit faster up a hill on a bike. It can be to shave a few seconds off a pb. But they need to be goals that will push you. If you enter a race or attend a training session without a goal, it's much easier to become either a bit complacent or just go through the motions. 

With a lot of the people that I coach, the majority of them are coming into the sport as novices and they make rapid and big improvements in a relatively short time. This is because of the big improvements that they make purely from more structured or consistent training. Almost every race is a pb for them. However, as an athlete improves and gets fitter and faster, their improvements can plateau a bit as the huge initial jump in fitness levels out. This is where we need to start thinking about setting more and more goals in order to challenge us and push ourselves. 

If you sit down with your coach and talk about your race plans etc, they should ask you what do you want to achieve at a particular race? In a club environment this can be a bit harder because of time constraints etc. Nevertheless, there should always be goals. Some of these goals may seem out of reach, but they will be there to help focus you and drive you on in your journey. 

If you set yourself a goal, for example, to go under 50 minutes for a 10k but when you race you don't quite manage it. You should reflect on what went well during the race, how you felt, could you have pushed any harder and also reflect on what didn't go so well and what you can do to change that. Then take those thoughts into your training sessions. Train with a fresh focus and think how hard you can push yourself during the relevant sessions. These days I never enter a race with the mentality of "I just want to finish it". Some coaches and people say that if you start putting a time on something that you're just putting pressure on yourself. Yes, you are putting pressure on yourself, but it should be a pressure to focus on what you're doing in training and to push yourself towards your ultimate goal.

What you must never do though is just get used to having no goals, or if you do have goals and you keep failing to hit them, you mustn't let yourself get used to it. This will cause you to almost accept that you're going to fail before you've started and this is when you'll start to "choke" or "bottle it" during a race. You know you've done it in training, but you just can't perform on race day. 

If you'd like to speak more about your goals and ambitions and how I can help you on your triathlon journey, click on the link below which will take you to my coaching Facebook page, where I can be contacted through

Certa Cito Tri Coaching

The road to recovery and the importance of a team environment.

Early days

After my crash, during the Helvellyn Triathlon on the 3rd September, my body was, or at least felt, completely broken. I literally couldn't move for the first 4 days, I was in a morphine and drug cocktail induced haze and the pain was completely indescribable, such was its magnitude.

However, one thing that never, ever entered my mind was "how will I ever recover"? Instead, I was of the thinking that every new day brought me one day closer to recovery. Granted, at the time I had no idea when I would ever be able to get up and move around pain free, let alone train again. But by the following Friday, the physio on the Major Trauma Ward had managed to help me to sit up on the edge of my hospital bed. Through sheer determination, by the following Monday I was able to get out of bed (assisted) and shuffle to the bedside chair and the following day I was able to do it unassisted. I was determined not to be downhearted.

During my stay in hospital my family, close friends and team mates at Invictus Triathlon Club rallied round and were brilliant, helping not only myself but helping Ruth too. Organising lifts for Ruth to the hospital, taking over my Head Coach duties, I had a regular stream of visitors (not to mention all the sweets). My mum also came up from Reading and stayed with Ruth and Hannah to help with Hannah's 13th birthday party.

When I got home my recovery continued to be nursed along, with Ruth and Hannah being amazing in helping my recovery. Whether it was Ruth drying me after a shower, or pulling me up so I could get to the edge of the bed, or Hannah swapping beds with me because I could only sleep sat upright, I felt like I was making improvements every few days.

Tentative steps

Not being one to take things lying down, after a few weeks I took my first tentative steps outside. I decided to set myself the challenge of walking around the block, a whole 400m. Those first few walks took me literally 40 odd minutes and I was having to stop every few metres to rest my body. I was still wracked with pain but I had to do something, anything. One of the things I kept thinking about during this time were my team mates and how, as a coach, I still had an example to set. Although taking a step away from the club in order to convalesc, I still kept one eye on the members and what they were doing and I thought that if I can try and demonstrate a determination to recover, it may give strength and encouragement to some of the members, should they need it.

Gradually, over the coming weeks and months I made small improvements, slowly increasing my walks, albeit they were still a shuffle and still very painful. By the time we reached late November I was feeling a lot better and thinking about a return to work, even if just to get some sense of normality.

Return to training, onwards and upwards

At the beginning of December, 3 months to the day since my crash I returned to work, and with it, decided to try and start rebuilding some fitness again. I also made a slow return to coaching and I think it was being at those first few sessions that really gave me the spark and determination to push my recovery.

I borrowed some dumbells and a kettle bell and started doing some strength work. However, one that really shocked and surprised me was just how weak I had become. I had stopped lifting heavy weights after I started triathlon in 2008, but I'd carried on doing some basic strength work, so when it came to trying to do a press up and finding that I literally couldn't do a single one as a result of the amount of trauma that my body had gone through, I was really surprised. But I've persevered and I'm making slow progress.

I also started doing some very short runs and a few turbo sessions too. I could see how some of our club members were training and pushing themselves and I fed off the buzz that was around the club. My runs gradually increased and I could see very small gains after most of my runs. Throughout this time I did my training away from the club, so I could focus purely on what I was doing, working on my mental strength and making sure I was also keeping the correct technique, but I was looking forward to returning to the club sessions and being part of the vibe again.

We're now at the end of the first week of 2018 and I've just completed my first full week of training. I even managed a swim (of sorts). I'm under no illusions as to how much further I still need to go in order to get back to some sort of full fitness and I know it's going to be a very long road that will no doubt test me physically and mentally to my limit. But I know that being surrounded by so many team mates who are all on their own individual journeys, I know I'll get there. It might not be something that any of us readily think about, but it's hard to explain or emphasise just how important it can be to train in a club where we can all feed off each others enthusiasm. Without my family and team mates I'd still recover, but I think it'd be much, much slower and I'd struggle to get out and do the hard work, but I honestly think my team mates have been and will continue to be an absolutely invaluable part of my recovery.

If anyone's reading this, who isn't already part of a club, get on Google and find one local to you. It's possibly the best thing you'll ever do in your sporting life. If you are already part of a club, get down to as many training sessions as you can. You'll get pushed harder to improve, you'll motivate others and you'll get some coaching that will help you improve. Not to mention the great buzz that you can get from training in a group environment. I guarantee that your results will almost certainly be better than if you train away from the club.

I feel like I've finally been able to start training for the Lakeland 50 ultra marathon and with the help of my coaching knowledge, great team mates and a supportive family I'm confident I'll make it.

If you'd like to speak more about your goals and ambitions and how I can help you on your triathlon journey, click on the link below which will take you to my coaching Facebook page, where I can be contacted through

Certa Cito Tri Coaching