Hello!

Reid here, checking in after our JBTR weekend. The Jim Bridger Trail Run is a 10-mile running race that we have been putting on for the last 30 years! We also added a rollerski race last year, making the JBTR a two-day event and a hard weekend of racing. Putting on these races is a fun time and a great way to connect with the community here in Bozeman, but these races are also a benefit to our training. Race efforts and time trials are something we add in occasionally to our summer training and more frequently in the fall. They are a great way to log sustained L4 training and one of the best feedback tools we can use for our training. Obviously, it feels great to win races and time trials in the off-season, but it is more importantly a training tool so that we can be fast when it counts in the winter! I see three important aspects from race efforts and time trials this time of year:

1)    Perfecting my warm up

2)    Experimenting

3)    Mental Training

Warming Up

Even if off-season races and time trials are inconsequential, it is important to treat them as if they are any other race. These races are the perfect low stakes time to dial in your pre-race routine and warm-up and find what works for you. If you don’t take the warm-up serious you can’t really reflect after the race and use it as a tool for the future (plus you probably won’t have a great race anyway). Before the JBTR, we have been doing a decent amount of volume training and so I don’t think any of our team was feeling fully rested before the race. I still used this race as an opportunity to get the best warm-up I could despite not feeling 100% fresh. This idea of perfecting your warmup ties in with the second important aspect:

Experimenting

           As said before, races/time trials should be treated as important races, but in reality, they are still low stakes. This makes them the perfect time for trying out new things. It is a time to try out something you normally wouldn’t do in a regular race. Try a much harder warm up than you normally do. Start the race faster or slower. Go for more risky decisions in your race. Reflect back on these things and if the race went “terrible”, maybe don’t try it again…But if the race went better than expected try incorporating it into next effort or race. Some of my biggest changes in the way I warm-up or race have been from doing something I saw as too “risky” to try in a real race that I gave a shot in time trials. In the JBTR rollerski race I decided before the race I was going to be the one who made a move towards the end and break away from the group. I am normally someone who sits and waits, trying to conserve as much energy until someone else makes the move. This move ended up working for this race, so I will have more confidence to maybe try it again in a real race.

Mental Training

           Lastly these efforts are great times to hone in your mental state for racing, which is the hardest thing in athletics to do. Training your body makes sense, you see changes in your fitness, but training your mind is a little different and harder to judge. Your mind is accustomed to think a certain way, making quick neuronal connections for everyday life as well as in your training and racing. This is why it feels so hard to become more “mentally tough”, yet it is possible to actually change these neuronal connections through frequent repetition, changing and connecting one’s beliefs to support their behavior. This gives “fake it till you make it” a real psychological phenomenon. Through things like positive self-talk and forcing yourself to think a new way when you are preparing for a time trial (even if your mind is telling you that you don’t believe it), by the time a real race comes around you may have actually altered the connections in your brain. Your new level of confidence in yourself and mental toughness is now the quickest, easiest, and most familiar way for you to think.

If you didn’t sign up for the JBTR this year, make sure to join us next year!

-Reid