Here are 22 principles that have stuck with me as a result of decades of training, competing and coaching.

Focus your training where you get the biggest payoff. For most triathletes, that's biking, the longest race segment.

Swimming is highly technical. Start with working on improving your technique before swimming distance.

Be early to your race to avoid unneeded stress. Save your adrenaline for the race!

Training camps in one form or another have been part of my athletic life since I was 12 years old, the youngest boy on my high school's cross country team.

Runner and triathlete friends, have you planned your 2018 races? Do you have your training plan ready? Are you now training for the big race? If the big race is near, are you following a periodized progression, peaking and recovery plan? If it's far, are you targeting other races and working on the base, lactate threshold, VO2 max, strength and nutrition that you need to excel?

The advent of fall racing calls on us to shift gears, and taper for our target (A) race. Here are questions I ask of myself and my athletes at this juncture:

Anxiety is a natural state leading into a big race, especially when the race is new to you and is an out-of-the-ordinary challenge. Race anxiety is self imposed, a form of approach-avoidance.

The lesson that I have to periodically relearn is that whatever recovery is built into the training schedule, be ready to adjust the schedule based on what your body is telling you. If the message you are getting is that you need more rest, active or passive, take it!

As a strong climber both in running and biking, I actually look forward to hills (except when I am already in extremis in a race).

Two recent articles on runblogrun.com1,2 by Jeff Benjamin (brought to my attention by Coach Jim Spivey) offer fun retrospectives on racing by Olympic Marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter and multiple Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers. We (meaning Frank, Bill and I) are the same age, with Frank a few months older than me and Bill a day younger than me. And, we are all runners and Frank and I have both competed successfully in multisport events.

As I have gotten back into masters swim training this year, I have watched my times drop, not so much because of better swim conditioning but more due to a strong focus on better swim mechanics.

Why would you need a coach for running or triathlon? I can answer that question!

For my fellow triathletes in the Annapolis Tri Crabs, most every week in recent months I have been sharing "the best of" my weekly swim, bike and run workouts. My intent is to give back to the club, be a motivator, offer varied workout ideas and, last, to raise awareness that I am a triathlon and running coach. This morning I realized that I could share these workouts more widely through this blog. See here we go.

It's not too early to ask, "How will I race this spring?" That is, beyond your training, what can you do to assure before and during the race that you race well?

This is the time of year I plan my running, swimming and biking for the year ahead. Out of this planning comes a set of races I am targeting and a detailed daily training schedule (sometimes laid out for a half year at a time) to put me in the best position to succeed in my target races, as well as to yield the fitness, well-being and overall enjoyment I get from running and multi-sport.

Having raced maybe 320 times in marathons and shorter running road races, cross country races, duathlons, Ironman and shorter triathlons, and short track speedskating races including national championships, I know the "now what?" syndrome all too well.

I vowed that some day I would run as fast as Billy. After all, I had learned earlier as a small kid that rather than fighting, my better option was usually flight. I already had indications that I was a runner.

Breakthroughs come in many, many forms. Here's a list (certainly incomplete!) of 150 ways in which masters runners and triathletes can break through limits, barriers and inexperience to reach new levels of fitness, racing success and mental focus.

By varying your workouts, changing pace and distance, and periodizing your training, you too can get to a new level of fitness and, if you have a goal race ahead, to the starting line prepared for a great outcome.