The Biking Hub: Mountain

General updates, Observations » Dan

Cycling goal setting in 2007

Well after a two-month break we’re finally back to work here. With family to visit, parties to attend and presents to buy, sometimes cycling gets put on the backburner around the Christmas holidays. Now that the New Year is here, it’s nice to be able to get back to the regular routine of riding, planning and (of course) trying to post some stuff up here on TBH.

My first post for 2007, other than to apologize for not posting in so long, is about setting goals. January is the perfect time of year to start looking ahead to the upcoming riding season and trying to establish what you would like to accomplish this year.

For some people, riding is completely about recreation, which means on any given day they’ll grab their bike, go for a spin and ignore things like distance, average speed and heart rate zones.
But for many riders, you reach a point in your learning curve where those types of things get more and more important, and regular rides morph into ‘training sessions’ where you’re trying to accomplish something more than just having fun.

Having fun should always be in the back of your mind, because this is a recreational sport, after all, but if you start taking the sport more seriously you need to focus on meeting certain goals, both in the short term on your rides, and in the longer term.

For me, 2006 was about just riding. After tracking all of my mileage in 2005, I wanted to have a bit more fun last year so I didn’t keep track of how much I had been riding. What I learned about myself last year was that I need to track my mileage to keep myself motivated.

So mileage-wise, my goal for this season is 5,000km. For some people that might seem like a lot, for others it probably doesn’t seem like much at all. But that’s the thing with goals - you have to set your own goals and not at all think about anyone else. For me, I rode around 4,000 km in 2005 and probably about the same last year. I know if I want to challenge myself, 5,000km is a good number. That works out to around 100km a week, which will be split between my road and mountain bikes.

The other important goals to set are performance marks. That could be finishing in the top 10 of a local race or completing your first century. Either way, events are a good way to gauge your fitness and give you something to shoot for.

I’m still working on my performance goals for 2007, but they’ll have something to do with finishing near the top of my division in a couple of mountain bike races, as well as doing well in the new Senior4 category of road racing in Ontario. I was competitive in a few novice races last year (including one win), so now that the Ontario Cycling Association has brought in a S4 division between novice and Senior3, I would like to be competitive in that division.

One interesting thing I recently read about setting goals is that it’s important to give yourself a challenge. Don’t just say you want to finish in the top 50 of a race if last year you finished 47th. And don’t aim for 2,000km when you rode 1,900 last year. Give yourself a serious challenge, even if it means falling short.

You might be surprised how much you can accomplish if you set your own bar high.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under General updates, Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.