Show me the evidence
The simple exercise that prevents athletes from walking into race day with the wrong expectations
You spend hours on your training program trying to get the nuts and bolts right. Long days. Hard sessions. Recovery. Strength work. Nutrition. Sleep. The goal is always the same: prepare the body and mind for the demands of race day.
Yet we routinely see athletes fall short despite doing solid work. So what gives? Is this you?
In my experience, misaligned expectations ruin more races than insufficient training.
Sometimes athletes set goals that are wildly ambitious relative to the work they’ve done. Other times they walk into a race expecting less than what they’re actually capable of. Both can be equally damaging.
This week, I want to share a simple exercise I use with every athlete to help establish realistic race expectations long before the starting gun goes off. You can use it too.
The workflow
1. Put the ball in their court
Well in advance of the race, I ask a simple question:
“What do you think is a realistic result for this race?”
I don’t provide suggestions. I don’t lead the witness. I want to know what they believe.
A finishing time. A placing. A pacing strategy. Whatever the outcome measure is, I want them to commit to an answer first. The response itself is useful, but what comes next is where the real value lies.
2. Show the evidence
Once they provide their answer, I make my own assessment privately and then I push back.
Regardless of whether I agree with them or not, I ask the same question:
“What evidence from your training log supports that outcome?”
Now the athlete has to build a case.
Which workouts, long days, race simulations support this result? Objective data is nice. We cannot skew the facts.
“Oh you’re fitter than that, bud! Don’t worry about those sessions!”
Bullshit. The body of work you create with your training is the signal. They are the clearest window we have into current fitness. Not perfect, but far more reliable than hope, hype, or what you were capable of three years ago.
If you end up with a race result that is dramatically better than anything you demonstrated in training, the ability was probably there all along. Some days present themselves as miracles, but those days are rare. More often than not, race day simply reveals the fitness you've already built.
3a. When the evidence is there
Sometimes an athlete absolutely nails it. They connect the dots between training and performance.
In these cases, the athlete isn’t guessing. They’ve developed a clear understanding of their capabilities because they’ve been paying attention to the process.
The athlete has already done the work of aligning expectations with reality.
3b. When the evidence isn’t there
Other times, the athlete starts scrambling.
They want the 16-minute 5K and maybe want to impress their coach by being ambitious, but when asked to provide evidence, there isn’t much to point to.
On the flip side, some athletes undersell themselves.
They’ll propose a conservative goal only to discover that several months of consistent training have been painting a much more positive picture than they realized.
So, what do we do?
I cannot just berate the athlete. We have to do something that builds the athlete up.
When there is a mismatch, we work together to develop a race plan that fits the work that has been completed.
If you’re four to six weeks away from a race, there are not going to be massive physiological changes that suddenly transform a pie-in-the-sky goal into reality.
This is one reason I recommend doing this exercise well before race week. Don’t spring it on yourself the night before the event.
Give yourself enough time to digest the answer and build a race strategy around it. Work with what you have.
As coaches, we shouldn’t simply hand athletes a target and tell them what to believe. We need to help them develop agency. You can read more about that process here:
We need them to become active participants who defend their expectations with evidence, thereby becoming more invested in the outcome. They begin to understand why certain workouts matter. They learn how to evaluate their own readiness.
That’s a valuable skill long after a single race is over.
Something I think about often “your fitness doesn’t care what your goals are”
I can totally relate with this Max brother. Misaligned expectations can surely ruin an athlete's race and I myself have personally experienced this a couple of times.