After competing in three 30K’s this year and trying to find a rhythm with them, I feel like I finally nailed one last weekend at the Harricana 28K (secretly and officially a 31K).

I took too many risks in my first, wasn’t risky enough in my second, and finally struck a nice balance in the third, pushing the gas pedal at all the right moments to finish among the best in Quebec.

Here are some of my reflections post-race and what I will take with me moving forward into future races.

REFRAMING THOUGHTS BACK TO ONESELF

In many of my races, I’m often thinking about what other people are doing. From a competitive standpoint, this makes sense. We inherently want to compete. We inherently want to show ourselves where we stack up.

Going into Harricana, I didn’t want to completely stop myself from having thoughts about my competitors and what they were doing.

But I also recognized that all of my best races (2x Sulphur Springs and 2x Harricana now) came when I focused almost entirely on myself.

So I wanted to figure out how to blend both approaches. That is – racing others in a fast, competitive, short trail race; while still minding my own business!

I won’t reveal all the secrets from our pre-race call, but Coach Jade had some great advice. Any time you have a thought about what someone else is doing, reframe it back to “What is Rhys doing in this moment?”.

This helped right from the start. I thought about how Louis and Benoît looked on the uphills, and I immediately shifted gears to how strong I felt.

This helped when Louis ran behind me for several kilometres without making his move to pass. As difficult as it may be to feel like you’re picking the best line for two people, I stayed really focused on what I wanted to do and what lines I wanted to take.

It became even more helpful when Anne-Marie caught up to me and laid down the hammer on the final big climb of the race. I continously thought about how strong I felt, how I was moving and ticking along, where my heart-rate stood, and how I needed to continue pressing the pace.

Crucially, this mentality also helped me make a calculated decision to regain a lead over Benoît and Cyril when I felt like the pace had dropped too far. I took my time and fuelled when the trail was too narrow to pass, and then bolted through as soon as I had the chance.

I think it can be easy to get caught up in what others are doing during a race. That’s fine, so long as you can use that as fuel for what you are doing.

TRUSTING MY THRESHOLD

Jade has given me a ton of threshold training in preparation for the past two races, which has meant that I have a much better understanding of how hard I can push for extended periods of time.

I’ve done things like a 30-minute race effort climb (that came in handy given the nature of Harricana’s final third), and other variations where we split those uphill blocks into smaller numbers, usually with a downhill recovery period.

The week of the race, we did a short threshold session on flat ground, giving me a final indication of what I could sustain for the long haul on race day.

This all helped me stay confident holding onto super fast paces last weekend. I was dealing with some lightheadedness on faster downhills on the day, and even this didn’t deter me from continuing to trust my training, and trust my fitness.

I’ve trusted my training in all of my previous races, but either pushed too hard within that pursuit, or in the case of Duchesnay, didn’t push hard enough in some of the muddy moments to make my way up to Louis.

Jade also had some secret sauce words pre-race call that I’ll keep to us for now, but it was along the lines of leaning in with an edge of caution, but fearlessness.

At this point, I have a really good grasp of what “too fast” or “trop vite” is for me, and I could trust that if I stayed within a certain range, I could sustain that effort for the entire race.

Admittedly, this is easier to do in trail racing when you know the course inside out.

I had so much trust in my ability up the crtical climb to the final aid station because I spent so much time on that section of the course last year.

It’s a luxury I won’t have when I visit Arizona for the 31K at Javelina, but the same lessons of trusting my training and my racing knowhow will certainly be key as I navigate new territory.

FUELLING HITS DIFFERENT IN FASTER RACES

In each of my trail races this season, I’ve either struggled to take in fuel, or made critical timing errors.

After Harricana, this is still a work in progress at the 21-30K distance. I find it much easier to take in gels (tasty XACT gels coming soon) than the XACT fruit bars when running this fast.

One of the problems is that I can rarely replicate this in training, as I’m often taking in nutrition on the recovery portions of workouts, or not running with the “survival mode instincts” that really kick in during a race and make eating more difficult.

I’ve reminded myself of some valuable relearnings from this race, like not settling for something you haven’t trained with at that fast of a pace.

But another cool learning moment in the race came when Louis put down what felt like an intentional move as I opened an XACT bar. In a moment where I intentionally slowed down, he intentionally sped up.

And maybe too lackadaisically, I remained unaffected. I thought I could catch him moments later. But instead, I didn’t cover the move.

And that is the only decision point in the race I can look back at and wonder, what if I tried to hang with him for a bit longer.

For one, I’m definitely going to be using that trick on someone else. I love small little tactical battles like this, and recognizing a moment to make a move on someone. For another, it’s a reminder to me that fuelling in faster races can’t be a moment to relax.

I fuelled in another moment where I felt stuck and like I had no choice but to relax, which felt like a great decision.

But in the tactical battles of racing against really intelligent, really speedy racers, you can’t really relax. Otherwise, you’re going to get caught out.

I think this will now be a good focus for Javelina, trying to nail the nutrition in my final trail race of the season.

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So those were some of my key learnings from my latest race in Quebec. I can’t wait to continue implementing these things in future races, and to help other athletes do the same. Thanks for reading and see you soon!