Hi Reader
Over the last two weeks I've been talking about reading your race properly and auditing the basics before you touch the training plan.
This week I want to challenge something that's almost hardwired into endurance athletes - the belief that when performance stalls, the answer is more.
More miles. More intensity. More sacrifice. More discipline.
I understand it. I've been there myself. There's something psychologically satisfying about doubling down when things aren't going to plan. It feels like you're doing something about it. The problem is that in athletes over 50, training harder into a problem usually makes the problem worse, not better.
Here's what I've observed over years of coaching athletes in their fifties and sixties. The ones who keep improving aren't necessarily the ones training the hardest. They're the ones asking better questions.
Not "how do I train more?" but "how do I absorb what I'm already doing?" Not "what can I add?" but "what's actually limiting me right now?" Not "how did other people train for this?" but "what does my body specifically need at this point in the season?"
I'll give you a personal example. Years ago I had a disastrous race in Lanzarote at the end of May. Everything that could go wrong did. My immediate instinct was to go away and train harder.
But when I sat down and thought about it honestly, I realised the fitness was already there. Lanzarote had proved that, even if the result hadn't. What I actually needed wasn't more - it was to protect what I'd built and focus on a few specific things that I knew were holding me back.
A few months later I set a PB.
Better quality, not more volume. That was the difference.
That shift - from volume thinking to quality thinking - is one of the most important transitions an endurance athlete over 50 can make. And it rarely happens naturally. It usually takes a bad patch, a disappointing race, or someone holding up a mirror.
Your early season races are that mirror. Use them.
The athletes I work with who make the biggest gains in the second half of a season are almost always the ones who resisted the urge to train harder in the first half when things felt uncertain - and instead got genuinely curious about what was holding them back.
That curiosity is a skill. And it's one worth developing.
More on that next week.
Train smart, Wardy
P.S. If you want support in asking better questions - and building a training approach that actually fits your life and your body at this stage - SWAT might be exactly what you need. Find out more https://simon-ward.kit.com/products/swat-inner-circle
P.P.S. This week on the podcast I'm joined by James Witts to talk about doping in endurance sport. It's a fascinating and at times uncomfortable conversation - but there's a thread in there about why athletes look for shortcuts that's directly relevant to everything we've been discussing this week.
Listen: What if nobody's actually clean? https://simonward.podbean.com/e/what-if-nobodys-actually-clean-%e2%80%94-with-james-witts/
Read the full article: Cheats or casualties? The uncomfortable truth behind doping scandals