The Triathlete Blueprint Newsletter #101-Plan your 2025 races better than 90% of athletes!

Read time: 5min.

By Coach Yan Busset

The Smart Way to Organise Your 2025 Triathlon Season

The race season is approaching fast, and by now, you probably already have your main goal in mind. But maybe you’ve been thinking about adding a few more races to your calendar. Some secondary or even tertiary goals. And then the question comes: how do you place them smartly? How do you adjust your training around them? We’re going to talk about all of that.

First, let’s be clear: you cannot chase several rabbits at once. You can’t expect to be at your absolute peak every single weekend. The goal with your training is to build towards one peak performance moment, maybe two maximum in the season. But for that, your two main races need to be far enough apart so that you have the time to recover properly and then build back up your training towards the second goal.

Let’s take an example: an athlete preparing for a full Ironman distance race. Maybe they’re thinking of adding a few 70.3s, some sprints, or Olympic-distance triathlons along the way. And honestly, I believe races are the best possible training. In triathlon, there’s a bit of a paradox. Unlike other sports where training is basically the same as competing, like in tennis you play tennis, in golf you play golf, in triathlon you rarely do the full thing in training, especially not in race conditions with hundreds or thousands of athletes around you.

Some people have been training for months but have never actually done a triathlon before their big race day. So what I recommend is working on your ABC triathlons. Start with smaller races to get used to what it feels like to run after the bike, to swim with a crowd around you, to sight between buoys, and to go through transitions smoothly.

Now, when you prepare for your main event, you’re going to go through what we call a tapering period. It usually lasts from one to three weeks, depending on the athlete’s experience and training volume. During that taper, you reduce your training volume while keeping some intensity to stay sharp but allow recovery. It’s a delicate balance that you fine-tune with experience.

The thing is, this taper is like a silver bullet. You can only really use it once or twice a season. Because if you reduce your training volume every time you race, and if you race too often, you’re simply going to detrain. That’s not what we want.

So you need to accept that if you want to hit your absolute peak, you’ll have to race your prep races without a big taper. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to go easy in those races. Race day is race day. You show up with the right mindset, you give it your all, and you aim to do your best on the day. But because you haven’t reduced your training load beforehand, you won’t be at 100 percent of your capacity. Still, you’ll go full gas with what you have in the tank at that moment.

The advantage here is that you won't push your body into extreme performance mode. You'll recover quicker from these prep races, you’ll absorb them better into your training cycle, and they’ll serve as excellent race-specific practice.

There’s a particular case I want to mention: marathons. A lot of athletes think about running a marathon in preparation for an Ironman. But let me tell you, a standalone marathon has almost nothing in common with the marathon you’ll face in an Ironman. The intensity, the sensations, the race experience, it’s a completely different game. So you really can’t draw solid conclusions from a standalone marathon for your Ironman.

What often happens is that, to prepare for the standalone marathon, athletes start to change their training. They’ll run more, they’ll cycle less, and they’ll focus too much on running. And after the marathon? Well, it’s still 42.195 kilometres of running. It leaves a mark. You’ll need several weeks to recover properly, and it doesn’t just affect your training before the race, but also afterwards. Realistically, you’re looking at a good month and a half, even two months, of disrupted preparation.

Running a marathon is a great goal, but the smart move is to use your Ironman build-up to get ready for the marathon. Do it later in the season, after your main triathlon event. You’ll carry all the fitness from your triathlon prep, then you just do a specific block for the marathon. That way, you get the best of both worlds and often, it’s the perfect recipe for setting a personal best.

Now, some athletes love to race very frequently. And that’s okay, as long as you’re aware of what it means. I remember one of my athletes who wanted to race almost every weekend. But then, he would complain that he wasn’t hitting personal bests every time. It was tough to make him understand that it’s simply not possible. You just can’t expect to perform at your absolute best every single week of the year.

If you really want to have consistent performances year-round, you need an extremely high training volume. That’s how the pros do it. They have the base, the mileage, the consistency that lets them race frequently and still deliver strong performances. They can chain races together because they have the volume and resilience to back it up. But even for them, if they want to peak for a championship race, for the Olympics, or for a big title, they’re just like anyone else. They also need a proper taper and a specific build-up. And they can’t repeat that many times in a year either.

So, to wrap it up, here’s what I want you to remember. There are some clear principles if you want to get the most out of your triathlon season. First, like I said earlier, racing is the best training. Especially for us living in the northern countries where the season is short, we need to take advantage of it while we can.

I love the idea of racing often, it’s great. But don’t forget that it’s also nice to select one or two clear goals for the year where you go all-in for your absolute peak performance. There’s really nothing better than lining up at the start of your big race, knowing you’ve done everything possible to be at your best. Because there’s nothing worse than crossing the finish line with regrets, thinking, if only I had done this, or that.

It’s this approach that I love when I coach my athletes. I want them to be confident on race day, ready to toe the line, knowing they’ve done their best with the time and energy they have. And of course, there’s no point comparing yourself to others. Everyone has different schedules, family responsibilities, work constraints. It’s okay. What matters is that, within your own life context, you’ve worked the whole season to build the best version of yourself. That’s what counts. And that’s what makes it all worth it.

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