In this new episode of Coach Floflo’s tips, I wanted to talk about our new organization. As you know if you have read our monthly recap from the spring when we were starting canicross with Luna, we were keeping a training book. 

A training book is a great tool to use in your training. It keeps tracks of your trainings, so you can look back and see your progress. We also record the conditions of the training. 

With our first race season, I realized that I needed that book to be more than just keeping track of our trainings. I needed a book to have all our race information as well, to keep track of our results, but also organize our travels and all of that. So here is what I have in the new training book.

Race planner

The race planner is where you would write the event name, the date, location, and then I chose to add if it is an IFSS for the world cup points. The last column is for me to indicate when I have registered to that race. That way, you have a clear overview of your race season. And you avoid being registered to two races at the same date or forget to register to a race.

Race budget

Because we have to travel a lot for races, it was important to keep track of the budget of each race weekend. It will help you realize how much that particular race costed, and if it was worthy or if you want to run this race again next year. I record the expenses by category: registration fee, accommodation, food, transportation, official pictures. It allows me to see where we can save a bit for example. Some ways you can save on a race weekend could be: airbnb rather than hotel room or preparing your own meals in advance rather than take out from restaurants or pizza delivery.

Race travel organization

This is where I keep the information about our accommodation for races. I would record the hotel name, the check in and check out dates, the rate, room type, and confirmation number. That way, I make sure that I have our accommodation booked in advance to secure a good rate, and not forget about it and having to book last minute.

Race results tracker

I used the same chart as the official IFSS one you use to apply to be selected for a world cup event. I will be honest with you, one of our goals for 2019 is to be selected to represent Ontario at the Canadian championships in 2019. To do so, I inspired from the official IFSS chart to record our race results.

It has our DID# on it, which is our driver number, the official IFSS number where the points are being added. It tracks the distance, a description of the race terrain (gravel, trail, mud, snow, wide or narrow…), the winning time compared to your time, your finish position compared to the number of entries for that class.

Personal races tracker

In the same idea, your personal races without a dog can be used as well in the decision to qualify. JC does a few trail races in the spring, and has already planned a few for 2019. 

Trainings

Now onto the actual trainings. I changed things a bit compared to our previous training book, to have more relevant information on it. I record the date, which human did the training, a different color code for which dog is running, a color code for the sport (canicross, bikejoring or skijoring), the location, distance and pace, and if we ran with any friends.

Because I’m an organization freak (yes I don’t even try to deny it), I did not want to have two training books, and keep everything at the same place. So I copied all the previous trainings from the old training book into the new training book. Okay I know it’s crazy. Anyway. It made me go back to all the first trainings we did with Luna, and made me realize of how much progress she’s done. She really started training in February 2018, so it’s been only less than a year, and she’s done so much progress! She has a huge potential and I can’t wait to see what she does next season.

I also can’t wait for Bolt to be a few months older to start running as well and be able to see his progress. Will he learn faster than Luna because we now know what we’re doing? We may also have to work on different things. Maybe he’ll be better at some aspects of the training but have to work harder on other. No matter what I can’t wait to write his name in the training book for his first training!