Why Your First Triathlon Falls Apart (It’s Not Fitness)

Triathlon 101 Series — Episode 7: The Mental Side of Your First Triathlon 

Most athletes spend months preparing physically for their first triathlon—but completely overlook the mental side of race day.

And that’s where races fall apart.

In this episode of Triathlon 101, Coach Justin breaks down the mental challenges you’ll face before and during your first triathlon—and more importantly, how to manage them so you can execute your race with confidence.

This isn’t about motivation.
 This is about understanding your thoughts, managing your emotions, and staying in control when things start to feel uncertain.

You’ll learn:

•  Why race day nerves are normal (and actually useful)
•  The 3 key moments where mental struggles show up most 
•  A simple framework to break negative thought loops: Acknowledge → Anchor → Execute
•  How to avoid the comparison trap during your race 
•  Why confidence is not a feeling—and how to build it
•  How to define success beyond pace, power, and finish time 

If you’re training for your first triathlon, this episode will help you show up prepared—not just physically, but mentally.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Why Your First Triathlon Falls Apart
01:03 – Why Fitness Isn’t the Problem
03:02 – When Mental Struggles Show Up
06:03 – The Night Before the Race
09:03 – Race Morning Nerves
15:03 – The Acknowledge → Anchor → Execute Framework
22:03 – Using Training as Your Anchor
27:03 – Focus Only on What’s in Front of You
31:03 – The Comparison Trap
39:03 – Why Confidence Isn’t a Feeling
48:03 – Defining Success Beyond Metrics
57:03 – When Things Start to Feel Off
1:01:03 – Breaking the Race Into Segments
1:02:03 – Final Takeaways and Race-Day Mindset

🎯 Ready for more guidance?
Explore coaching and resources at Tabula Rasa Racing:
👉 https://tabularasaracing.com

🎧 Listen to more episodes:
The Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.

If this episode helped you, share it with someone preparing for their first race—and leave a review to help more athletes find it.

For coaching inquiries:

Coach Katie → https://fuel2run.com

Coach Justin → https://tabularasaracing.com

Podcast Email → theenduranceathletejourney@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Triathlon 101, a beginner's guide to Triathlon, an endurance athlete journey podcast series. I'm your coach for this journey, and if Triathlon has ever felt confusing, intimidating, or out of reach, that's exactly why this series exists. You don't need to be fearless, you don't need to have perfect fitness, and you definitely don't need to have everything figured out yet. What you need is a clear plan, honest guidance, and the confidence that comes from taking the right steps in the right order. In this series, we'll strip away the hype, focus on smart progression, and help you build confidence before distance, so that triathlon fits into your life, not the other way around. Whether this is your first race or your first time even considering one, you're in the right place. Let's get to work. So most people approach this sport, the workouts that they're doing, how many times they're running, biking, swimming, strength training. They are solely focused on the physical adaptations that they are trying to accumulate or that they feel are necessary in order to compete and complete their first triathlon. But one of the things that I find as a coach is the athletes that I speak with really do not give a whole lot of thought to the mental side of the sport. And I I've witnessed many times where athletes did not falter physically, they faltered mentally. And I can be honest that I've fallen into that same boat as well, where I've gone into a race maybe mentally weaker relative to my physical strength and the ability to execute a well-thought-out race is hurt because of the mental weakness or the lack of preparation for the mental side of the sport. And solely focused on okay, what's my pace going to be, what's my power going to be, how am I going to swim this? Where do I need to be in the swim? All those things are valid. And if they are things that you should be considering, but it's not the only thing that you should be considering and thinking about. Because I've seen where races will completely unravel because the athlete did not understand how to process their thoughts, didn't know how to process their emotions, and so it doesn't matter how physically strong you are or how physically prepared you are and how many workouts you did and how consistent you were if the mental side is not there. And so during this episode, we're going to focus on things that you are possibly going to feel. Now, I don't want to say that you're definitely going to feel these things because everybody is different, and I'm not going to be naive enough to imply that everybody feels the same way or same things. But I will come to you with potential ideas on how to manage these emotions, how to manage these thoughts, on things that either I have experienced in my journey, or things that my athletes have experienced as well, and how we've worked through that process and filled in those gaps so that they could show up on their next race day prepared both physically and mentally to race and execute the plan. I will go through some aspects on why you may be feeling the way that you do, and most importantly, how do we respond to those? So this episode is not a motivation kind of episode. I'm not going to come in and say, hey, you can do this, you know. I'm not going to reinforce the motivation. What I want to do, and the purpose of this episode, is I want to help you understand and manage your experience for your race and how to process these thoughts and emotions and how to break these loops when you get stuck in them during your race because that is really important. So let's start. We're going to talk about next. When do these thoughts and emotions tend to present themselves? There are key moments during your race experience where these thoughts and emotions are more likely to show up. The first time that they're going to show up is going to be the night before the race, before you even show up at the venue, right? So we in a previous episode we talked about your race day experience. And in that episode, we did talk briefly about how to be how to prepare the night before, how to pack your gear and all that kind of stuff. All that is still relevant, but there are thoughts and emotions that you're going to experience throughout the evening before you show up to the venue for your race. And I want to help you process those emotions or how to manage them. So for the evening, what I have found in my experience is get all that preparation stuff done as early as you possibly can. Then I want to encourage you to find whatever process you find helpful for you to unplug your brain. Because that's where all this stuff is coming from. This is where all these emotions and these thoughts are coming from. They're coming from your brain. It's not lack of preparation, it's not you're not prepared for this or you're not good enough to do this. That's not where this stuff is coming from. So I want to help you cut it off at the source. If that means for you that sitting down and reading a book is a way that you unplug your brain, if that means sitting down and doing some yoga or some meditation will help you disconnect and just turn that focus inward. If that means that maybe you sit down and you go lay down in your bed and you have a if you have a TV in your room and you just pop on Netflix and just put on a show that's just mindless, something that doesn't require a whole lot of thought and processing. If those things work for you, then leverage those things. What I find works for me is that last scenario where I just sit down and just unplug and just turn on Netflix or whatever streaming service that you've got and just sit there and just kind of like mentally shut things down. I don't typically like to sit down and read because I find that just re-engages my mind even more. And so I'm trying to find things that will slow down my mind, not re-engage it. I've never been much of a meditation kind of guy or a yoga guy. It just never really worked for me very much. But if it works for you, great. Absolutely. Leverage those and lean on those methods. And do it for however long that you need to do, but then still try and get into bed at a decent hour and get some good sleep. That's one of the things that I find that I have found works in managing pre-race thoughts and emotions. Now we arrive at race day. There's going to be three times during your day where these thoughts and emotions are going to possibly show up. The first one is going to be right before you start swimming. So we're all lining up in the corrals, or you're laying out your transition area. That's typically where these things start to snowball a little bit. The next time is going to be kind of like right in the middle of your bike. That's where things start to you've settled down now and you've gotten out of the excitement of getting out of the water and then getting on the bike and all the chaos, organized chaos that comes from transition of making that move from swim to bike, and all the people are around cheering and everything else, and your adrenaline is pumping. It takes a while for that adrenaline to fade off a little bit. And so by the time you kind of get settled into the bike, typically like around a quarter of a way into the ride or about halfway, you're now settled in. And this is where things start to get real a little bit. You're in your own thoughts. You're riding with others, maybe people are passing you, you're passing others. Your mind starts to take over a little bit. The last time, or the third time, I won't say it's the last time, the third time that these emotions and thoughts can possibly present themselves is early into the run. When you've made that transition from the bike to the run, you're starting and you feel awkward, and we've talked about this before, which is why we practice these brick sessions at the latter part of a training plan and preparation for a race. That's all about pacing and just effort control. And we want to develop those neuromuscular pathways that allow us to transition from the bike to the run, but you're not necessarily gaining fitness by those types of workouts. But what you are trying to do is you're trying to practice managing emotion, managing your thoughts, and managing your effort. That's the purpose of a brick workout. And I've tried my best over the years to convey this, and it's a hard one to break because triathletes love their brick sessions. It's what really makes them unique athletes is the this presence of a brick session. It's oh well, I'm not a runner and I'm not a cyclist, but I'm a triathlete, so I do both. It makes me different. Honestly, it doesn't really. But those are the three things that we tend to really focus on during our brick training because when it comes time for race day, those things are going to materialize. You're they're going to show up again. And so using those sessions to process these emotions and these thoughts is really important for your race. Looking back over my experiences racing, I'm just as susceptible as you to this. One of the things that I can vividly remember is I was doing Iron Man Chattanooga, and this was my first Iron Man, and I had done one loop of the bike course already. And I was going out on my second loop. It was, I don't know if it's still like this, but it was shaped kind of like a lollipop. So you come out of the swim and you ride up the stick of the lollipop, and then it loops around, and that would form the lollipop, and then you'd go around again and then come back down. I was starting on my second loop of the bike, and my brain was going a million miles an hour. And it was I was questioning things, I was uncertain, and so I really had to focus and break those loops. And later in this episode, I'm going to help you with those with some suggested ways to break those loops and what worked for me in those types of situations. It's not the only race where it's happened, but it has happened. And there's one key thing that I learned works for me, and I'll talk about that in this episode. So to wrap up this particular segment, I want you to understand that the issue is not that these feelings are showing up, because you have no control over that. I don't want we don't want to suppress the feelings. We don't want to and say these feelings are showing up, so there must be some validity behind them, because that may not be necessarily true either. The issue is not the presence of the feelings, the issue is not knowing how to interpret and manage those in an effective way that keeps you in the moment and focused on what it is that you're doing. So my purpose here in this video is not to help you suppress these feelings and to get rid of them completely. That's not my intent at all. My intent is to help you understand how to interpret these when they do show up, how to manage them, how to break loops and refocus. That's the intent of this particular episode of this series of Trithron 101. All right, so let's progress now. Let's get into the pre-race situation where we have these pre-race nerves or these thoughts. It is okay to feel nervous. Now, your nervousness is not an indication that you are underprepared. It may be if you haven't been consistent and you didn't execute your plan, you could have not executed your plan 100%, but you were still fairly consistent and you executed as best as you could. Then maybe you are a little insecure in your preparedness, so those nerves are a result of you feeling underprepared. But if you've been consistent and you followed your plan and you executed it, and you got in 90, 95% of your workouts, and you stuck to the spirit of the workouts, even if you may not have hit all your targets, hit bike pace bike power targets and pacing on the run or swim, you know, swim pacing, or hitting every single one of your intervals, those are fine. That those don't make and break a race. What it does do is it plants seeds of insecurity in your mind, and you're gonna go back to those situations like I didn't do this and I didn't hit that and I didn't hit that target. Am I underprepared? So, what I want to convey in that situation is we want to say, hey, I was consistent. I stuck to the spirit of the workouts, my fitness is what it is, the work is what I put in, and this is what I've got, and we're gonna go out and we're gonna execute this race the best way that we possibly can. I'm gonna control the controllables, I'm going to be in control of the things that I can control. And there are only a few things during a race that you actually have control over, which is what makes this sport so much fun. Because it really is a crash course and crisis management. And that's to me, that's what makes this fun, this sport, a blast, and why I have so much fun doing it. The presence of nervousness is simply an indication that this is something that's important to you. If you weren't really nervous, then I would question and say, okay, how important is this to you to execute this plan or for this experience? Is it like, oh, I could take it or leave it, in which case you may not be nervous at all, but then maybe this is something that's really important for you to you, and you worked really hard for it. It's perfectly reasonable and to be expected to feel nervous. At the time that I'm recording this video, I've been doing this sport for well over ten years, and I've raced every distance, and I I can tell you that I still get nervous before a race. It's anywhere between hey, am I going to perform the way that I really want to perform? What are some potential things that can go wrong? What can go right? Not necessarily what are others going to think because honestly, I'm working really hard to break that particular bad habit that I have. But I've realized that if I didn't feel that way, something would feel off. I would start to really question am I approaching this race now from a place of gratitude, from a heartfelt posture? And if I'm not, then that nervousness may not be there. Even though I'm confident in the work that I put in, the nerves tell me that this is happening the way that it should happen. And I want to convey that to you that it's okay to be nervous. So I I just want you to understand why those nerves are showing up, and what are some things that I do, like on race morning, that may help alleviate some of those nerves and maybe take my mind out of the equation. One of the things that works for me is I show up on race day with maybe just some headphones and I'm just listening to music. Music is a I've found is my way of disconnecting and refocusing my mind and helps me cut out surrounding distractions. Because when you show up on race day, and we've talked about this in the previous episode, it's a little bit chaotic. There's people everywhere, there's bikes everywhere, people are walking around, laughing, talking, they're nervous, and so you may be picking up on some of that nervous energy that's surrounding you. You're setting up transitioning, you're just like, and those thoughts are like, oh, did I forget anything and all that kind of stuff? But you've already packed your stuff and you went through your checklist, and so everything is there. But it's common to still questions like, oh, did I forget something? Even though you know that you didn't. So I have found that just plugging into some headphones and finding a playlist that works for you. Sometimes I'm in the mood where I want amped up music, where it just gets me pumped and ready to go. Sometimes I need that. Other times I need something that's a little bit more relaxing and maybe a little bit more inspirational, a little bit more calming. So depending on how I'm feeling that morning, I'll select a particular playlist based on how those feelings and those emotions that are going on. If that works for you, great. This is an idea that you can leverage and maybe try out for your next race. So the next thing that I want to talk about is your race morning. We've gotten to the venue now, and maybe you're lining up for the swim. And you start to question maybe your swim workouts and your your swim preparation and things like that. There are three things that I typically will use to break those loops that you get stuck in. The first one is acknowledge. And what I mean by acknowledge is that I want you to recognize and tell yourself, like physically tell yourself, this is part of the process. This is normal. These thoughts and these feelings that I'm having right now is not an indication that I'm underprepared and that I don't belong here, and that I'm not going to perform, and they're gonna yank me off the course. Those thoughts could possibly be running. Through your head. They've ran through mine. But recognizing that these thoughts and feelings are purposeful and that it's natural to have them really to me takes away their power. Because it it starts to say, this isn't about me. This is just the way that my brain is processing the situation and the environment that I'm in. So I need to refocus that brain and break the loop. So if you acknowledge that this is normal, it takes away its uniqueness and the power that it has. The next step is what I call the anchor. The anchor is you're going to go back and rely on your experiences during your training to reinforce your preparedness. So what this means is you're going to say, Hey, I did my swim workouts. I prepared as best as I could. I did all the little things well and executed. I did all of my bike workouts. My run, my runs were good. I managed them. My recovery was purposeful during training. And I've done this a hundred times. This is today is no different than all the previous days that have come before it. That's one of the things that really works for me is recognizing that today is not special. It may be special in terms of this is a special event and this is what you've been working towards. But from a physical, like a physiology perspective, that this you're not doing anything that you haven't already done. Have you gone these particular distances before? Maybe not. But you shouldn't have in some of these aspects. So, like for instance, your run training, if you're doing longer course race, you may not have run a half marathon or a full marathon during training, and that's perfectly reasonable. Shorter courses, it's a little bit more realistic to maybe cover the distance that you're going to cover on race day. Is it mandatory and something that's required? No, it's not. But that consistency that you saw during training, you have to find a way to leverage that on race day. So one of the things that that I've done before is I'll break up the race into different pieces. And when I'm lining up for the swim, I'll tell myself, hey, I've done this many times before. This is no different than what I've experienced before. This is just another normal swim. And leave it at that. What that does for me is it removes the uniqueness of the day and the importance of the day in my mind and normalizes it. And it just tells me, hey, this is just another normal day. This is just another normal swim. We're going to go out and we're going to perform. We're going to execute our plan. And this is just another day. I've done the same thing on the bike. Jump on the bike, and it's like, hey, this is just another normal ride. I can approach it as if it's just another normal training ride with just higher intensity and more structure behind it. Because there's a plan that you've got going into race day. And you know, the same thing for the run. So I've found that if I can leverage the consistency that I've had during training and apply that to race day and say, hey, I've done this before. Even if this is your first triathlon, you're still trained for this process. So use that as a way to make you feel more confident and to alleviate your feelings of, oh, this is a different kind of day. Because realistically, it's not. And I found that if I can keep telling myself, this is not a special day, this is not a special day. This is what I've been training for, but this is just another day. I found that really helps me. And so the last step is the execute step. What I mean by the execute step is that we're going to focus on only the next step in the process. We do not take a full race view of what the day is going to be like. Because if you're lining up for a full Iron Man, you have a long day ahead of you. Even for a half Iron Man, it's still a significant day in terms of duration on how long you could possibly be out there. But if you just break it up, it's okay. I'm on the bike now, I shouldn't be thinking about the run. I should be riding to prepare for the run, but I should not be consumed and concerned about my execution of the run because I'm not there yet. If you're lining up for the swim, you shouldn't be thinking about the bike or the run or even transition for that matter. Focus solely on what's in front of you. I found that if I can narrow my focus on just either the task at hand or what that next step is going to be, that next small step within the same environment. If that means that you have a two-loop swim, right? And you're lining up for the swim, just start thinking about the first loop. Right? Don't think about, oh, I've got to do two loops. Just think about, ah, I'm just thinking about the first loop right now. And the second loop takes care of itself. So you thinking about the second loop before you've done the first loop does you no good. All it does is it gets you stuck in your head and the loop perpetuates itself. Think about the first loop. Again, second loop takes care of itself. Same with bike stuff. You're just going out and don't think about, oh, I need to hit my power targets or my heart rate and all this kind of stuff. And how am I going to manage mile X of the ride when you haven't even started riding yet? You've just now gotten on your bike at that stage to say, what's my next step? My next step is I'm on the bike now. I need to settle into this. I'm going to give myself five or ten minutes to get calm and refocus my mind. So I'm not trying to hit a power target. I'm not trying to get my heart rate up to some particular level. I'm not trying to hit a particular speed. My goal right now is just to get comfortable on this bike and settle into the effort. Once you reach that, then you focus on the next step. Okay, now that I'm comfortable, I'm settled in, you know, there's no more chaos, and we've got some spacing now. I've got my own personal space right here. Now I can start to manage my effort. I found that if you can start to divide these stages into smaller steps, it's easier for the brain to process what's going on and what you really need to focus on in order to control the nervousness of what is to come. So if you can focus on what is now or what is coming and less on what is to come later down the road, I find that that is really helpful. And as a summary, we've got the acknowledgement phase, the acknowledgement step, which means that we're acknowledging that these thoughts and nerves and everything else, all that stuff is normal, is part of the process. This is to be expected. We're going to anchor in to our training and our consistency and say, this is just another normal day, right? This is race day, but it's still just another day. And that last one is I'm just going to focus solely on what's in front of me right now, not what is to come later down the road. Okay, so next step is I want to talk about what I call the comparison trap. This can happen throughout the entire race. It doesn't necessarily just happen in transition where you're walking through the transition area and you're seeing all the bikes and you know, all the people that look like they're in much better shape than you are, or they've got nicer bikes, and all this other kind of stuff that can perpetuate your insecurity and preparedness that you've put in and where you are in your journey as you start to look at others on where they are. You have no idea where these people are in their journey, how long they've been doing this, what their training was like. Somebody could have just a beautiful speed bike, just an incredible$10,000 bike, and have not been consistent with their training whatsoever. They're so underprepared, they're not ready, but they just happen to have the gear that makes them look ready. I can tell you that there's been many times where I've flown by somebody on a$10,000 bike, and I'm riding my converted road bike that I bought more than 10 years ago now, it's got thousands and thousands of miles on it, and I've gone right on by them. And does that make me better? Does it make me more prepared because I have a better or lesser bike? No, not at all. It's the engine that matters. So if you can tell yourself as you walk through transition or you're just riding on the bike course or whatever, and you're or you're running through the run course and people are running as if it looks effortless, just tell yourself, I don't know what they did to get ready for today. I can't say that if I did what they did, I would be where they are, because you cannot make that assumption. You can't make that conclusion that if you did what they did, you would be where they are. I've made that type of statement in my own mind from time to time, and I have to remind myself, you know what? Their training was their training. This is my training, this is my execution. I may not have been able to handle their training, they may not have been able to handle mine. So I internalize it. I start to discount what I'm seeing around me and focus solely within. So I'm turning my perspective from an external perspective more internal. So again, using these types of tools like the headphones while you're walking through transition, I found helps me put blinders on. So I'm not looking at all the expensive bikes and everybody else preparing their stuff. I'm focused solely on what it is that I'm there to do. This is my race, this is my plan, my execution, and these are the tools that I have to get me through race day. They may not look as nice as somebody else's tools, but they are effective for me and where I am in my journey. What I want you to tell yourself, or ask yourself, don't tell yourself, I want you to ask yourself what matters right now, not what matters later. What matters to me right now? And then you have to define what that plan is, break the loop and return to that plan, and then stay with your plan. So, what I mean by that is let's say that you're on the bike and you're riding right now, and people are passing you, and it feels like you're almost sitting still. Does that mean that you are executing a poor race or that you are not prepared and you're not as ready as they are? Does that mean that? Absolutely not. You have no idea what their plan is. And there have been many times where I've seen people that have flown by, they've tried to fly by me, and I find them struggling on the run. They've overbiked, they got wrapped up in the moment, allowed the adrenaline to take hold of them, and they abandoned their plan, they abandoned their strategy, and they went with what they were feeling in the moment. Those feelings will, I don't want to say will. They can come back and haunt you later because you're tapered, you're well rested, and you're prepared. This is the day that you've been looking forward to, that you've been preparing for, training for, everybody around you is excited, everybody wants to see you succeed, and those feelings start to really pump you up, and that adrenaline starts flowing, and it's easy to get caught up in that. So when you find those situations where you're maybe questioning, hey, am I prepared as they are? Or those insecure questions. You have to remind yourself and tell yourself, wait a minute, I don't know what their plan is. I know what my plan is. What's my plan? And then you draw back. It's okay. My plan is I'm spending the first 10 minutes on this bike, easy, settling in, hitting zone two efforts, just to try and get on this bike and get moving. After 10 minutes, I can open things up a little bit. So now you've defined what your plan is or how you defined it to start with. Are you executing that plan right now? If not, you need to return back to that plan. You're like, okay, I'm this adrenaline is flowing right now, or I'm feeling insecure because people are passing me, and maybe I'm going too easy. But you need to draw back on what your plan is. What is your execution strategy for your race? Return back to what that plan is or was and stay with your plan. Don't get wrapped up in somebody else's execution because you're feeling insecure in your performance based on what other people are doing. This is your race. And stop trying to catapult yourself to their race, right? You don't know what their plan is. They may be going out and overbiking on purpose because they know they're not going to be able to run, so they're trying to bank time on the bike so that they can walk more on the run. You have no idea what their strategy is. And so by piggybacking off of somebody else's performance, saying that's where I should be, that's what I should be doing, is going to haunt you later because you don't know what the rest of their strategy looks like. The next thing that I want to talk about is this idea of confidence. And I I will say that there's this misconception that confidence is a feeling. And that's perpetuated by the phrase, I feel confident. One of the things that that I do as an athlete, and what I help my athletes do as their coach, is I try and break this mindset that confidence is a feeling. You should feel confident. No, that's the wrong way to look at it. Confidence is evidence-based. It is something that you are confident. You don't feel confident. I am confident. And I am confident because of X, Y, and Z. So this means that I can say I am confident because I executed 95% of my training plan and I kept to the spirit of the workouts, even if I didn't hit every single target and goal during training. But I was consistent. That consistency breeds confidence because it's the evidence that you're going to draw on to make you confident. Confidence is something that you pursue. It's not something that you get, and it's not a feeling that you have. Because feelings are transitory. Feelings come and go. The amount of feelings that you're going to have during just the span of one race is going to span the entire spectrum of emotion and feelings. There's going to be times where you feel great, that you feel happy. There's going to be times that you feel sad. There's going to be times that you feel frustrated, feel angry, feel insecure. All of those are valid feelings that you could possibly have on race day and during your race. Notice confidence is not in that list that I gave you. Because confidence is something that you pursue, that you lean on, and it is backed by evidence. That's what confidence is. Because athletes don't feel confident even when they're prepared. So let's say that you're going into race day and you executed 90-95% of your training plan, you did well, everything was working great, but you don't feel confident, or that you say, I am not confident. What that's going what's going on is it is your brain scanning for potential risk. Your brain is processing the situation that you're in where you think that you are going, and what you're going to come into, and your brain is looking for potential sources of risk over that time horizon. If your brain starts to perceive that there is a high level of risk occurring, or consistent risk throughout the duration, that is going to erode your confidence. So one way to combat this is going into race day with little mini plans on how to manage risk throughout your day. For example, let's say that you there's a risk of getting a flat tire on your bike during the bike course. What's your plan? Well, plan is I have a repair kit that's on my bike, I have an extra tube, I've got some CO2, or I've got one of those little digital inflators, and I have practiced changing tires, I know how to do this, I'm going to make sure that I calm my nerves and just get back into the moment and not, oh, my day is completely unraveling. Because once you start that path, you're going to it's going to snowball and it's going to make changing that tire even more difficult and it's going to take you longer. So if you can find a way to just say, look, stop. My day is not on my day is not over. It's not unraveling. I know how to do this. Refocus on the task at hand. Now you go into that with a plan. I know how to change a tire. I've practiced this. Right there, that experience is enough for your brain to process that there is. Less risk now. It perceives less risk because you have a prepared plan for that. Let's say that you're in the swim and you have your brain perceives a risk of, oh, what happens if I get kicked in the head and my goggles come loose? And what happened? That's a valid risk, right? It's a possibility, it's potential. So, in practice, during training, maybe you practiced resetting your goggles in the pool like halfway through a lap a lap, right? So you're swimming along, and then let's just say you just take your goggles and just let the water flood in as if they were just repositioned by getting hit. And you roll over on your back, and you start to just kick and try and you're getting afloat and you're resetting your goggles, you're dumping the water out, you're getting the seal back on, you get situated, you roll over, take a few strokes, no little no leaking in the frame in the goggles. Great. Then you continue. Oh, I'm getting some more water in there. So you roll back over, dump, boom, keep going. That's your plan. That little mini plan is enough for you to feel more confident now, to be more confident. See, it's even hard for me to not say to feel confident rather than to be confident. This is a really hard habit to break. But you've practiced this and you have a plan. The presence of that plan is going to tell your brain that there is less perceived risk there. So it's going to discount it. That discounting of risk is going to boost confidence. So confidence is something that you create in the moment that you're in. And that's fine. That's reasonable. If you find yourself in a place where you aren't confident during your race, then you have to go back to these steps that I've given you in order to get that confidence back and have it return. Because it's momentary and you have to be purposeful with it. So if you start to feel if you start to be not confident, then you have to say, look, I've done this. I am prepared for this. I've done all the little mini plans that I can possibly think of. My coach has helped me come up with solutions to potential problems. I know how to do this. This is another just a normal day. We're going to swim, bike, and run, and that's it. And now your confidence starts to come back a little bit more. And so you have to refocus that and break those loops that keep showing up and eroding confidence and allowing the emotion and the mental and the nerves to start to accumulate. You got to pull that drain plug every single time that starts to happen so that you can refill it with confidence and positive thoughts and positive mantras that you've that that work for you, cues that you've developed over training that help refocus the mind and get you back into the moment. So this next section that we're going to cover is defining success. And this is one of the things that as a coach and as an athlete myself, where I have to work hard at. And I have to work hard with my athletes on this because triathletes tend to be very much a-type personalities. I know this because I am one. Did I meet the time? Did I beat the time that I set out to get? Were my bike power numbers where I wanted them to be? What was my run pacing like? How did, you know, did I come in at the right time for the swim? Were my transitions efficient? And in terms of the duration that you spend in during in transition, were they minimized? Those are all things that we use to define the success of the day. And it's perfectly fine. It's reasonable to use that. What I work with my athletes on is I find other ways to define success as well. This could be not quantitative results, but qualitative results. How did you feel coming out of the swim? Did you feel like you just got dragged down the street? Or did you feel as if, you know, you've got 95% still left in the tank? That swim really didn't take it out of you. You felt great. You knew you were prepared for it. That's a qualitative result. It's completely separate from how long it took you to do this swim or what happened during the swim. We're looking for that softer definition of success. How did you feel? I felt great. I feel like I could have kept swimming. Perfect. Great. I don't care how long it took you to do it, that's a success. For the bike, how do you define success? I was this fast on the bike, this is my miles per hour, this was my cadence, this was my power over the time. Was it successful? I don't know. Because there's a lot of factors that can influence those metrics. Was it windy? Was it a hilly course? Was there a lot of drafting that was going on and people were in smaller packs, and so it was hard to navigate and keep pace because you're being forced to regulate your effort based on the others that are around you. As you start to look at those metrics, then you start to evaluate whether this was successful or not. I say when you got off of the bike and you got onto the run, how did you feel? Oh, I felt great, but it didn't take me very long to get my run legs under me. Normally, it takes me like 10 minutes or so to feel like I've worked out the wiggliness of my legs, and I start to feel like I've got my run legs under me, but it only took me seven minutes. Then that's a huge success. What that means is that you executed the bike appropriately in order to set you up for a good run. That's what that means. That is outside of how you performed on the bike, it's how did you execute the bike in order to effectively run afterwards? That's another great measure of success. For the run, this was my pacing. Did I have to walk at all? Uh did I execute the plan that that I had? If you had a run-walk strategy, were you able to stick with that strategy? This was like this was my pacing and all that kind of stuff. All right, great. As a definition of success, hey, were you how did do you feel like you handled eight stations? Oh yeah, that was great. I grabbed one cup of water, dumped it in my mouth, grabbed the second cup, dumped it on my head, didn't walk through the transition. I just kept moving, worked on those strategies of pinching the cup in order to funnel it so that I get more water into my mouth. I executed those. That's outside of your run performance, but that's something that you were successful at during the run portion of the race. Use those, capitalize on those. Don't disregard them just because they're not tied to a performance metric. The reason that I'm getting I'm trying to make this point is that when you first start out in your triathlon journey, success, in my mind, success should be defined as execution success, not performance success, not where did you place, what was your time? Those things are fine. But to me, they come later in your journey. Right now, we're looking at execution success. Did you follow your plan? Were you uh did you stay present in the moment when you had those moments where you had mental weakness or you had some insecurity? How did you handle that? Wow. I relied on some of the tips that you gave me. I got these cues that work for me and helped me refocus my mind, break the loop, and I got back into the moment. If something went wrong, oh I kept my calm, kept my cool, stayed present, stayed focused. I had a plan that we had that we worked on, and I was able to execute that and get back to the day. Did you respond or did you react? Those are the things that that I use with new athletes to really define success. And it's outside of performance. Because in my mind, results, like performance-based results, aren't necessarily something that you physically control. Your placement in the group in the division that you're racing in is not a function of your preparedness or the the way that you executed the race. It's a function of who showed up on race day. So if you look back and you're like based on past performances and people that have shown up over the years, I should be within the top five, maybe potential podium, and so come at the end of the race day, you weren't anywhere near that. Doesn't mean that you executed a poor race. It just means that people showed up today that may not have shown up in the past, and so maybe competition was a little bit higher than it has been in the past. Does it somehow discount your performance? Absolutely not. You still performed well. It's just you had no control over it. Did you have control over the conditions in which you were racing in? Past years, cool, cool temps, low wind, low dew point, all that kind of stuff. This year, crazy windy, actually hot, full sun, no shade, and my performance took a hit for it. What would that lower that perceived lower performance mean that it wasn't a successful day? No. It just means that the conditions this year were different than last. So that's outside of your control. But what you can control is the execution of your race, how you proceed from one step to the next. That's what you can control. That's what can define your success. And when you combine these two, a performance-based metric and a qualitative-based metric in terms of defining success, I find that you will feel and be more successful because there's stuff that's going to work and there's stuff that's not going to work, and we learn from those. We learn more from the things that did not go well in the poor performances than we learn from the stuff that went perfectly well and we executed it great and we had a PR. We learn more from those other things than we do from those PR days. So you cannot discount them and throw them away because they are extremely valuable. The next thing that I want to cover is what happens when things start to feel off. Right? So you're going to be in times during your race where it just doesn't feel it doesn't feel good. You're going to be in the swim and there's it's heavily congested, and there's people around you. This is common with two-loop swims, where they still do these rolling starts, but it's a two-loop swim. So basically, the faster swimmers are still going to be swimming over the slower swimmers. They're just on their second loop of the swim. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be any safer or any easier or more pleasurable. It's going to feel chaotic. And so you have to be prepared for that. It's going to feel off. So what happens when that situation presents itself? You're like, oh, this is I just let's find some clean water somewhere. This is going to be my response to this moment. And based on the content that we've talked about in these ser in these episodes, hey, how to keep calm? I'm going to slide over here. I'm going to separate myself a little bit. I'm going to find some clean water. I'm going to collect myself and start to find my rhythm again, find my breathing again. And once I get settled, okay, now I can rejoin the pack and get it back, get back in this. There's going to be times where you're on that bike and it's uncomfortable. That seat starts to wear on you a little bit. You're just like, oh, I want off this bike. I've been there many times myself where it's just, is this bike over yet? But you have to find those, you have to find a way to break that. Look, this is only momentary. Once I get off this bike, I'm going to feel better. So the discomfort that I'm feeling right now is momentary. So let's just refocus the mind right now and let's get back in this. There's going to be times where you're out there on the run and you're going to feel tired. Your legs are going to feel heavy. They're going to feel tired. Stuff's going to hurt. So these are not failures of preparation. Sometimes they're interpreted as failures. Because I think many of us go into these races thinking that, oh, I trained for it, so it should be easy. No. This is hard. This is hard stuff. It's not going to feel easy, regardless of what your preparation was. It's going to feel hard. This hurts. I don't want you to go back and say, I should have trained more. I should have done this differently. I should have done that differently. There are situations where maybe that is valid and you should be talking to your coach or somebody that you trust and say, was this discomfort that I felt the result of being underprepared or what? Because it may not have been. So saving that evaluation for after the fact is something that I truly recommend. Don't try to evaluate this, these perceived quote unquote failures in the moment because we don't know yet. It's not done. So allowing that time to pass where we can sit down and critically evaluate what happened and what didn't, that's the time where we can start to define what is quote unquote failure or something that didn't go as planned or didn't go as expected, and then implement ways to either fix it or start to just accumulate more experiences to where you know it's going to show up. So if you know it's going to show up, it's got less of an impact on you. My advice to you is to try and stay clear of definite of defining failures in the moment and wait for to define those after the fact. So the next one is to reset this framework is I don't want you to go into a race thinking that you have to have the whole race figured out and you have to quote unquote solve the race right now. And I alluded to this illustration earlier in this come in this discussion where I approach a race in segments. So when I'm on the bike, I'm not thinking about the run, I'm thinking about the bike. If I'm in the swim, I'm not thinking about the run or the bike. I'm thinking I'm in the swim. This is what I'm focusing on right now. Breaking these things up and in little pieces to narrow our focus allows us to re-engage and get more present and get back into the moment rather than allowing it to really snowball and take us places that's only going to hurt us later. So I think that I've covered this pretty well. And so let's bring this to a close here where I'm going to summarize what we've talked about is that the presence of nerves is not an indication that you're not prepared. The presence of nerves is expected. It means that it's important to you. So understanding why you feel the way that you do, and whether it's completely to be expected or normal, to me removes the power that those feelings have on you. And once you start to remove that power, then you start to gain that, you start to be more confident. Focusing on staying in your process, executing your strategy and your plan, and not using other athletes' performance or their perceived performance as an indication on whether you know you're executing well or not. Quote, stay in your lane kind of idea will help you manage the mental side of when you start to feel like you're losing ground because others seem to be gaining it at a faster rate than what you are. It's a long day ahead of you. There's still time. And just because they're in that moment, they seem to be moving quicker than you are, doesn't mean that they won't be moving slower than you are later. So coming to that realization will help you manage your effort more effectively because you're not allowing the thoughts and feelings to allow you to abandon your plan and abandon your strategy. Leaning on the preparedness that you put into your training, leaning on those experiences that you had over the many weeks of training for the race, you have to find a way to capitalize on that. You have to find a way to go back to those times when you start to feel things aren't going well or you're starting to feel overwhelmed about what's in front of you. You just have to say, look, I've done this before. I've prepared for this, I've ridden this bike, I know how to handle it, I've done the distance, I've done the volume that I needed to do in order to be prepared for race day, and I'm going to lean on those experiences to make me confident. Right? Finding those cues and mantras that you need to allow you to reset when things are snowballing. I've what I can't tell you what mantras work for you. I know it works for me. Sometimes that mantra is this is just another day. This is just another bike ride. This is just another run, another swim. Nothing special about today. Just go out and execute. Those are my mantras that I find tend to work for me. So the last one is the definition of success and where you are in your journey relying more on execution to define success rather than performance metrics to define success is something that I strongly encourage you to pursue. This isn't just one race. At least I hope it's not for you. If you're a one and done athlete, then maybe none of this stuff matters to you. But for most that I come across, once they get that first race down, they're either hooked and they loved it and they want to continue, or they just said, This isn't for me. Usually it's that first one, they're in it. So realization that This is just my first race. I've got many more to come. I've got many more experiences to have, more things to learn. This is an accumulation of skills over time. I don't I should not be expected to have every skill that I need in order to execute a good race. I just need the appropriate skills to execute the race where I'm at and where I am in my journey. You shouldn't be expected to have a skill set that is equivalent to somebody who's been racing for 10-15 years and has all of those experiences to draw on. You shouldn't feel like you should have to measure up to that person. You are where you are and you have the skills that you have, and you'll accumulate more over time and be okay with that. So in closing, if you find yourself preparing for your first triathlon and you're watching these episodes, and they've provided some insight to you, and but you're still looking for a little bit more, and you're looking for somebody to maybe help you on your journey and to be prepared and to be confident, I hope that you will consider reaching out to me. So you can go to tabula rasa racing.com and click on the link at the top where it says start here, and you can look through that page. There's tons of content that's on the website. If you're interested in coaching, there's a coaching tab that's in there as well. It will show you the two options that I typically have, either one-on-one coaching or training plans that I produce. They're all custom. But if you're looking for some help and you're just looking for more information, please go to the website. Again, it's taboo-rassa racing.com. You'll find this Triton 101 series on the site as well as blogs and podcast links and everything else. There's tons of content out there, and I hope that you will leverage that website to help you along in your journey. And feel free to reach out to me if you have questions or you want more information. Again, if you are listening to this on the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast, or you're watching this and you've never heard of the podcast, great. Go check it out. It's on wherever you consume your podcast content from Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, all those different major platforms. Please check us out. So it's called the Endurance Athlete Journey Podcast. I'm one of the co-hosts, along with Coach Katie Kassane, who is a registered dietitian and longtime runner and coach. We hope that there's going there's tons of episodes that are out there so you can pick through the library and find things that that speak to you, or you can just start from episode one and just work your way right on through those that content is there for you to help you. If you found this episode to be helpful to you, I hope that you will please leave a comment and a review. Those are greatly appreciated. I'd love to hear from you. And if you know anybody else who may be benefited by this particular episode, share it. Send it to them, send the link. There's an accompanied blog for every episode of the Triathon 101s. You'll find a blog, you'll find an audio-only version of this, along with this video. And however you want to consume your content, I've made it available to you, and these are all free of charge. Take advantage of it and leverage it. And if you have any questions, again, feel free to reach out to me. You can go to taboolarasaracing.com, send me a message, or look me up on any of my socials. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram and YouTube. So please reach out if you have any questions or if I can help you in any way. Again, my name is Coach Justin. I'm head coach and owner of Taboularasa Racing, and this has been Triathlon 101, managing the mental aspect of your first triathlon. I hope you all the best, and I will see you all again next time. Later. That's it for today's episode of Triathlon 101, a beginner's guide to triathlon, an endurance athlete journey podcast series. Remember, you don't need to have everything figured out right now. Progress in triathlon comes from consistency, patience, and taking the right next step. If something you heard today sparked a question or gave you a little more confidence, that means you're moving in the right direction. Stick with this series as we continue breaking down triathlon one step at a time, building confidence before distance, and focusing on a process that actually fits real life. Until next time, trust the process, keep showing up, and remember, you're becoming an endurance athlete long before you ever cross that finish line.