Train experience matters

Experience Matters
We all age. Plain and simple. Yet as the years accumulate perhaps we can use them to our advantage in endurance sports. So how do we do that?

ANDY MORTON WAS my biology teacher at school back in the late ‘80s. He seemed even then to be getting on a bit. His car sometimes had a kayak on it and at the time that was the sole extent of my knowledge of his sporting pastimes. Fast forward to now and he’s a good friend through our shared interest in endurance sports. A year short of his 70th birthday, he remains one of Scotland’s top marathon kayakers. His house is unsurprisingly littered with medals. I’m fascinated by how he continues to excel in his sport. Whilst his pure physical performance remains impressive, each of his races contain a wide range of strategic decisions, all of which help propel him to the front of the field. His training is also methodically planned and recorded. His mantra is an old one – “preparation is everything” – and he certainly leaves nothing to chance. Being a science teacher by trade, as expected, he loves his graphs and stats. He’s clear that his actual physical performance has dropped over the years – he reckons by 1% per year from the age of 50 and by about 1.5% per year from sixty. To me, that’s a remarkably slow decline and one that I’m sure has been significantly stemmed by his perfect use of experience. Andy’s certainly not as quick as he once was, but he remains highly competitive in his sport. He keeps a detailed diary of his training and racing, regularly referring back to it as he prepares for his next effort. He doesn’t train with power meters and only occasionally monitors his heart rate. Instead he simply listens and learns from the best computer there is, his own body. His race nutrition is minimal and he’s very focused on his weight, keeping it as light as possible.
Over the years I’ve had many coffee catch-ups with Andy, where we compare notes after our respective races, he calls them “Post-Mortons”. My own tales seem to contain more and more pre- event planning and race tactics. He nods approvingly and I can see he’s biting his tongue not to say, “I told you so!” It seems I am listening. He reminds me of similar experiences I’ve had in the past and uses them to very accurately predict how future races will pan out for me. So in the outdoor activities and events world that we all love to do, how much does experience really count? I’m in no doubt that experience is frankly an astonishingly powerful tool in endurance sports but the big caveat to that is that you have to use that experience to its full potential. Andy does that to perfection. The march of time is inevitable and far too many of us succumb to the clear physical effects it has on us. I’ve seen plenty of guys in their mid twenties holding their backs or clutching their knees as they complain about age – what on earth are they talking about? There seems to be a sad resignation amongst far too many of us to stick one foot in the grave, at least in terms of physical activities, at a very early age. On the other hand, older people like Andy who successfully harness their experience to the maximum can be seen at the start of races with a noticeable smugness on their faces. Pre-race nerves never seem to bother them. They’ve been here before… a lot. The younger competitors look all together different and are glad to see the Portaloos close by!

10 TIPS FOR THE EXPERIENCED
However, simply having experience is in no way a guarantee that it will assist you in your endeavours. In order to do as well as possible you have to use it wisely. Here are 10 key tips:
01 Choose the events and activities you do wisely. If you’re looking for performance and a decent result, go long and chuck in things that sort the men from the boys – mud, cold water, mountains, that sort of thing. Short explosive activities are best avoided and seriously run the risk of injury as you age.
02 Don’t forget that the best advice you can use is your own experience. What you’ve done in the past, how you have coped with it and what works best for you are all experiences that are completely personal to you. No book or coach can get close to that. Keep a record of your experiences and look back on those records regularly.
03 In my opinion the hardest person to take advice from is not our mothers or our other halves but is instead our self. Most if not all of us have a self-destruct button that we like to push; not listening to our own advice puts the finger on the trigger.
04 Don’t forget the power of your years.
My school rugby coach often told us (though I’m not entirely sure why, as it wasn’t a great piece of advice for school kids) that: “A good old’un will always beat a good young’un”. He was right and that advice does resonate with me now.
05 Remember that dark places tend to be a lot lighter if you’ve been there a few times before. First time pain is really sore; but after several years it gets a lot easier to manage and cope with.
06 The only way to work out what nutrition works for you is to try it, preferably a lot. Your years give you plenty of time to test all sorts of fuel.
07 Don’t underestimate how much doing events and activities over a period of time gives you a professional edge, irrespective of your performance levels and ability. The body always adjusts and adapts both physically and mentally.
08 A body that doesn’t ache is a body that isn’t used. It’s all part of the fun. In any case you’ve always had aches; it’s only that as we age we like to have things to complain about. Come on – you know this is true!
09 Be realistic and accept that some things will decline with age. The trick is not to overly expose those in what you do and instead focus on the other aspects that strengthen with age. This is never more important than in relation to the mental approach required. In this lark, good mental tactics beat physical flexibility every time.
10 Take comfort that your experience will tend to aid you with safety in your adventures, limiting risk of injury and helping with self-preservation. You learn from your mistakes here. But please don’t be that mega pedantic bloke that insists on catering for every single possible (or indeed impossible) scenario, and ends up putting vast swaths of us off from the outset! After all there’s life in us still and we do like our sporting efforts to have a small element of risk to remind of us of that.