Goals

I specifically wanted to speak about goals today. In the past few years I've gotten a little complacent in my training which in turn has hampered my improvement. Case in point. I happen to be cleaning up my PC files and noticed that I had quite a few of my old race results. In the past 3 years my times in each discipline haven't really improved. If you examine the paces for the swim, bike and run you'll notice that everything in each year is quite similar. So, how do I change this to improve for this coming year. I think that setting specific goals would be a good start. I watched a clip from the Science of Triathlon DVD and Wes Hobson was speaking specifically on Goal Setting. Two points that he made were interesting to me. One, "setting goals is the foundation of all your training" and "without goals your just spinning your wheels". This definitely sounds familiar. Two, "goals should be challenging yet achievable". I think that I need to be realistic on my time commitment and physical limitations and than decide on some specific goals. I know that I cannot physically ride a 40K TT in under 1 hour. I've done this in my younger days but physically I cannot achieve this. But, averaging 30K+ over 40K in a standard Olympic race is. In the next few days I'm going to publish some general goals and than focus in the coming weeks on more detailed goals.

Nutrition

I've always tried to eat properly but I still think that this area can need improving. My weight has been floating around 165lbs for the last 5 years or so but would live to lose that last 10 - 15lbs. So I'm starting to watch the calories and what I ingest at each meal. To help with this I'm going to try and take my lunch to work. Somewhat difficult in the corporate environment with business lunches and such but I'm going to give it a shot. I've calculated my calorie intake for each day and have a pretty good idea what I need to consume. I've already made some choices and have cut out the wine, beer and snack food from the menu. Also, I've drastically increased the amount of water per day to ensure that I'm always fully hydrated.

To be continued...