Athletics Season Review: Why Performance Analysis Is Important

By Destiny Ogali

It’s that time of the year...

Depending on how your season went, you may now be feeling great joy and satisfaction from your performances and achievements, or an element of disappointment or frustration for not getting what you were wanting in the year.

In this blog, we will discuss both scenarios and how we can grow and learn through the experiences we encounter, regardless of the situation.

Photography: Tony Attwood

My Athletics Season In A Nutshell

For me, this year was up and down. 

One of my goals for the season was to be more wary of my health. To an extent, I would say that we achieved that. I was able to compete regularly and even had a whole month straight of racing!

I was able to put together 5 races over the span of 2 days, which I’m very pleased about. Out of those 5 races came a PB in the 200m, which I had been wanting for quite some time!

Starting off your season run-down with the positives is always helpful. We can definitely be too hard on ourselves for not achieving our goals. Yes, we want to win and do well, but we also need to take the time to be grateful for what we did do and how we did it. Although the PB wasn’t by much, it meant a great deal to me given the circumstances involved.

Being riddled by injuries over the past few years has been extremely frustrating. It’s like taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. I wanted to put together a full season of racing and really see what I could do!

It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though, unfortunately.

Dealing with competition disappointments

I had to end my season rather abruptly after the British Championships due to a nagging Achilles issue that I had developed towards the end of the summer.

It was bittersweet, as I knew my body needed to rest. I would, however, have preferred to end my season healthy, instead of nursing yet another injury.

The great thing about it was the fact that I have been able to get regular and consistent treatment to ensure the issue is dealt with immediately.

It’s okay to have setbacks. As we recall our seasons, it’s pivotal to address them and speak about them openly with the people that we trust. I feel it’s better this way. In doing so, it enables us to grow and learn.

It’s often when we have the chance to conduct those meaningful conversations with our trusted friends and family that we can then initiate the necessary changes required to alter the outcomes for the future.

For me, having the discussion with my coach about when the pain started and what I was doing prior to the injury helped me to better understand my body and what was taking place, which ultimately resulted in my injury. Although it wasn’t an easy conversation to have, I left the discussion with more knowledge than I had before.

May this be an encouragement to you. Have those tough conversations. Although it’s not easy, you can come out of them feeling refreshed and ready to go. Be clear and concise about what you want to do. And if you aren’t sure about what the next steps are, relay that information and be open to ideas and suggestions.

How can we still improve as athletes?

An amazing question. For almost all athletes, this is what drives them. The desire to improve and get better.

As a coach, this is the kind of question you would long for. Having an athlete with an undying passion to continually improve and a coach who is prepared to put everything in place to ensure it happens is the situation you would want to find yourself in. However, there are plenty of athletes (you may be one of them) who struggle to see improvements in their performances.

Year after year, no PB. I’ve felt the same. For the last 4 years, I haven’t run a PB over the 100m. It’s very frustrating. Especially when you feel you have been doing the right things. It leads you to question yourself and your methods. For me, it was a huge shock. For the entire duration of time prior to 2022, I had run a PB every single year. It was somewhat of a regular occurrence for me as a junior athlete.

I trained, competed, and ran well each year. I had never questioned it as it was quite normal for me. So, when it finally didn’t happen, I was extremely confused. Just knowing that I wasn’t any better than I had been a year prior, despite all the training I had done, was just baffling to me. Of course, there were reasons as to why this was the case. But at that moment, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t understand why.

Through these last four years, I’ve learnt so much about myself. It isn’t the PBs that have kept me in the sport of athletics for this long. Nor is it the medals or GB vests. Don’t get me wrong, I do LOVE running PBs and representing GB. But these aren’t the overpowering factors of my commitment to the sport.

Why I still compete...

My main reason for continuing to stay committed to this sport isn’t the tangibles. It’s the intangibles. The love of running and competition. I run because I love it! I’ve run since I was a child, and I don’t plan to ever stop running (to some degree).

So, with that in mind, despite my shortcomings, I press on. I love what I do! And when you love what you do, you keep going! So, when I ask myself, “How can we still improve?” I ask that question with joy and excitement at the opportunity to try again and be better.

And, of course, we need to address weaknesses and plan everything out accordingly in terms of goals, training, and recovery. For me, knowing that my love for the sport is one of my foundations brings me more joy than the excitement for what comes with running well.

If I am only pleased with myself when I am running well, then I probably should’ve stopped running 4 years ago, right? Absolutely not!

The excitement I get from having new and fresh conversations with my coaches about how we can improve is just as exciting as when I first started out, simply because I love the sport that much!

If you’re still unsure why you run, even after many seasons where you didn’t quite reach your goals, I would encourage you to reminisce on why you got into the sport in the first place.

For me, doing this led me down a road of beautiful memories and experiences that I will always cherish. How could I give that up? I surely hope that you don’t either. 

What goals should you achieve as a sprinter?

The fun part about sports is that we get to do it again and again!

Even if your season wasn’t quite what you were looking for, you get the opportunity to take that frustration into the winter and really work on your weaknesses with your coaches.

For me, the goal is simply to be better than I have ever been. Improvement should always be desired.

It doesn’t always come straight away, though. For some, it takes years, for others, months. The only way to find out is by continuing with diligence.

When you know that you are improving over time, it shows progress. Clearly, something you are doing is working well for you, and that’s reason to celebrate!

Discuss your goals with your coaches, and then plan out together how you intend to reach them. Your goals may not actually have anything to do with performance metrics, which is absolutely fine!

This upcoming year, you may want to switch things up and move forward with a lighter approach, where you aim to race again and again! It might be the polar opposite, where you feel you overtaxed the body and want to reduce the amount of races you do so you can go into the season feeling fresh. These goals are just as important. They really can make a difference.

The great thing about setting goals is that they’re specific to you and what you want to achieve. Even within a sport like Track & Field, where success is measured by time, distance, height, and length, you can still set goals that have nothing to do with any of those metrics.

We don’t have to solely aim for PBs and medals to see a productive season. Of course, we want to run faster and win, and that will come with time.

However, having other personal goals outside of that can help in reducing the pressure to always be at your best. We won't win every single race (if you do, that is seriously commendable!) and that’s okay. We learn so much more from the losses than the wins anyway. Don’t be afraid to lose. Instead, be excited to learn.

Don't be afraid to keep learning

There’s such beauty in the end of an old season and the entry into a new one. A fresh start. A new opportunity. It invokes feelings of excitement and anticipation. Those two things paired together create a wonderful combination of joy and splendor.

Let go of the old and step into the new with patient expectation of new experiences and lessons along the way.

I can assure you, this is just the beginning.