I will often have athletes post race do a "report" mostly just to look at execution, IE in a long event I really want to know how close to the actual nutrition plan they were.

Nothing emotional etc more just data and a reference for how the plan unfolded. I get them to send it to me, and keep a copy for themselves.

Maurice

Yep. If I had a coach I'd send the real, full report.

It's just that saying something like "there's a cat. 5 climb from mile 1-2 on the run, stay in Z4 than pick it up from there" gives a bit more free, unsolicited course info than I'm comfortable giving to competitors goggling race reports on the course (I goggle race reports on new courses myself), lol.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

Consider what the race report is meant to accomplish.

If it's basically as a look at me I finished (there's part of that in every report), and also letting others know how well the race was run and how nice the town was; then yeah you can make it shiny and pretty.

But if part of the mission is to help the next person that comes along then execution and in particular pacing strategies would be very helpful to the reader who might be doing the race next time. They are particularly helpful if they didn't work for you. You learn more from mistakes as they say.

On the other hand if you're Johnny Fairplay and trying to get Fred legally draft with you on the ride so you can beat Sam the excellent runner, then I can see not letting all the secrets out.

Most of all you have to be comfortable with what you publish obviously, no matter what anyone wants to know. but I'd encourage you to include nutrition in terms of cals / lb / hour on the bike and run so people can learn from what you publish.

Sorry, but I don't really think there are any "secrets" that you might have that give you opponents anything that would benefit them. If anything, chasing your tactics means they aren't following their own race plan. the more you share, the better off you are. It can get in their head. I mean seriously, this isn't draft legal racing and we're not talking about broadcasting little strategies like when you're going to attack, etc. But your results speak for themselves and you opponents usually know what your going to be doing, how strong you are etc.

It's like keeping FTP secret. Unless you know my CdA and can see my power output, TSS, VI, for the course.... what good is it. Even then what good is it. They don't know how I'm feeling... how well my nutrition is working that day or how much I'll have in the tank the last 1/4 of the run.

For me at least, "the cats out of the bag". I have a list of results from this year, so when I come off the bike, they'll know what it should take to beat me... just as I knew roughly what it would take at every race this year to beat them.

Seems like at the amateur level your playing with fire, trying to race tactics. You'll get burned a lot of the time and some slow swimmer, good cyclist, fast runner you didn't anticipate will come out of nowhere and beat you while your playing those games. Happened to me 2x this year. Potentially cost me a AG win and 1 place in another race. But racing tactically is also more fun.... in the end, having a fun overall race experience means more than a finishing position.

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TrainingBible Coaching
http://www.trainingbible.com

actually the other way around - my primary race report is always written for eyes only, the published report is bowdlerized, sanitized, and otherwise cleaned up and made presentable..

Actually, one of the reasons I started my blog was for me to have a personal record of the details of my races. I had gained a lot of useful insight reading others' reports, so figured I would put my own out there and share in case they were of interest to anyone else. Win-win.