Coach’s Corners – Goal Setting

In the last coach’s corner we talked about keeping fitness in the Fall and recovering from your race season. In the overall scheme of training the next big step that I mentioned last time was to talk about is goal setting for the upcoming season.

Let’s start with a definition of a goal and maybe a few synonyms to help you get to where you need to be. A GOAL is an end one strives to attain. GOALis the purpose for your actions. Some synonyms that are relevant would be a destination, objective, mission or target.  Before you keep reading take a minute to understand and absorb that goals bring purpose to your training, goals are the answer to “Why am I doing this?”.

-  Are you thinking?
-  Absorbing?
-  Thinking some more?
-  Wrapping you mind around the idea?
-  Picturing a goal?
-  Getting excited about training with purpose?

Great now that you took that time let’s look atgoal setting  Good goals should be ones that you have control over, are within your grasp and appeal to you on a deep emotional level that will that will give you the stamina to reach them.  Okay let’s break the above down a little more.

Control – A goal needs to be about you not someone or something else that you have no control over.  Example – “My goal is to beat Joe in a sprint.” does not work as well as ” My goal is to  bring my top speed in a sprint from 28 mph to 31 mph.”

Within your grasp – If you have spent any time on a bike you know that for most people small improvements require a lot of hard work and dedication.  So you have to plan on setting goals that are attainable given your situation. ” My goal is to win the Purgatory road race in the 3s” may not be very attainable if you are a cat 4, have no time to train and were dropped at the same race last year.

Finally the goal needs to appeal to you on a deep emotional level – simply put if a goal does not meet some deep inner desire it will be seemingly unattainable even if it is within your control and attainable.  You simply will lack the drive needed to get where you want to be.  So if you goal is “Be the first person to the top of the hill on the local group ride.”.  You will not make a extra effort to do it simply because deep down you know that even if you did get to the top of the hill first you will not feel rewarded.  Now get some paper and a pen and write some goals!

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