Ep. 264: Ask Matt Anything - Troubleshooting Training to Race Day

Welcome to another "Ask Matt Anything" edition of the Purple Patch Podcast. Today IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon tackles your voicemails and emails. You asked and today Matt answers your questions on training and racing through a coach’s lens.
In this installment of "Ask Matt Anything", Matt answers your questions related to:

- Management of training
- Expectations around improvement
- Race preparation strategy
And much more.

Episode Timestamps
0:00 - 03:28 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
3:43 - 07:24 - Word of the Week
07:32 - 37:53 - The Meat and Potatoes: Episode 264: Ask Matt Anything - Troubleshooting Training to Race Day

08:30 - Question 1 from Joan: “I struggle with keeping up the hard training as well as my performance when I head to work. I often find myself falling into really deep drowsiness in the middle of the afternoon desperate for sleep. I try and battle through and I can certainly feel like it's impacting my focus and my productivity in the afternoon. I feel like I sleep okay. But I just wonder what I should try and do to improve my afternoon energy. Is it the hard training that's negatively impacting me?”

"The good news is that all of the things I'm going to suggest are pretty simple, they're actionable. And I think that by addressing these simple aspects, you're probably going to see a pretty radical shift in improvements..." - Matt Dixon

16:24 - Question 2 from Neil: “I just put my heart and soul into training for three full months. And I raced my first Half IRONMAN just a couple of weeks ago. And while I feel like I've improved my consistency, and throughout my training, I just didn't have a good day, I improved a little bit, but nowhere near as much as I would have assumed. And to be honest, right now, I'm feeling a little discouraged. I feel like quitting. Is it wrong of me to expect bigger gains in performance after such effort over so many months?"

"We want to think about this in longer-term athlete development. Because it's not only going to be a smart approach if you think about gains over the long term, and you don't think about any singular race as pass-fail. It's going to be a really empowering mindset for you." - Matt Dixon

28:25 - Question 3 from Carla: “I recently returned from my first half Ironman distance, but I found myself showing up at the start line, mentally and physically exhausted from the race week logistics, planning my equipment, mapping out my fueling and hydration, trying to get everything perfect around my meals. I just felt like a pinball throughout the days leading into the race. How do athletes remove some of the stresses and the logistics that have impacted me so much? I didn't feel like I raced to my trained potential because I was just exhausted."

"I can't overstate how much cognitive load is removed from athletes when they truly prepare for race week before they step into the venue itself before they arrive to the venue." - Matt Dixon

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