2016 Goals

Like years past, I have quantifiable goals for 2016. Early in the year, someone asked me to pick some focus words for the year, and I started with "flexible" and have since added "brave"

With this as a focus, and with some new opportunities available to me since switching work locations last November, I have made yoga my biggest "stretch" (haha) goal for the year. Besides that I'm sticking with my regular goals of getting work done

• Run - 150 hours
• Bike - 200 hours
• Swim - 200 miles
• Strength - 36 times
• Yoga - 100 times

I felt like some of the mileage goals that I had used historically for running and biking were making me run harder than I should on easy days, so changed those to hours this year. Swimming is less variable, so I left that as a distance measure.

Last year's yoga goal was to attend 30 classes, but I only had 2 opportunities every three weeks. Now, with 3-4 opportunities per week, and a year of brave flexibility, I am really increasing that.

So far, I'm on track with the yoga and strength goals, ahead in running, and catching up on biking. I had a bit of a hissy fit at swimming after Ironman, and haven't been putting in the time I should, so am already feeling that goal will be un-achievable, but am looking forward to the summer when the outdoor 50m pool opens to try to get some easy distance in the sunshine.

Like last year, I'm reviving my mini-goals which give some focus to the build cycle.

My outcomes I hope to achieve with the work represented by these goals are to be competitive in my age group at races. In the marathon last year, I was in the top third of my age group, and in Ironman I was in the 40th percentile. I believe that some stronger biking and solid running will get me a top third outcome, and am eager to see how it can play out.

Setting Goals

I read this blog post a few years ago that distinguished between goals, targets, and outcomes, and it resonated with me. Since reading this, I've tried to let the outcomes be what they are, and to get there with smart and consistent goals.
http://kropelnicki.com/goals/triathlon

For 2015, my most quantifiable goals involve getting work done

• Run - 750 miles
• Bike - 2500 miles
• Swim - 200 miles
• Bootcamp/Strength - 36 times
• Yoga - 30 times

I'm currently behind on all but running, but expect things to pickup from here. I might not make the swimming goal this year since it was based on going 3x per week most of the time, and for the first 4 months of this year, I haven't been hitting that too well.

I have also made smaller term goals in the past like "Be active - achieved by doing 8 workouts in the week", and for this 3 week build cycle, I want to get a Monday strength workout in and I want to build on the bike hill workouts.

Using the language of that blog post, I have an outcome time I would like to achieve for IM Choo -- also known as "the post-it of my dreams". I believe the biggest training-related variable that will influence that outcome is my biking strength, so I hope to develop some most specific goal/target level plans to help me hit that outcome.

Biking related goals, like biking more, working on strength, and working the biking muscle systems in training, will help me set training and race day bike targets, which *hopefully* will help me get my desired bike outcome.

Fingers crossed, and checklists ready for checking!