Week Two: Gooooooooooaaaaaaaalllll(s)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the week of 3-28-11 to 4-3-11.

Soccer is not one of those sports that easily holds my attention, unless 1) my daughter is playing or b) it's being announced by an overzealous Spanish speaking dude. Nothing like listening to someone yammer on in a language I don't understand, and then suddenly "GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!" It's all very exciting...

Which, brings me to the topic of the week: goals. The key to any successful plan, whether it be a triathlon, a marathon, bicycle racing, or weight loss is to set goals. I, personally, like to set short term and long term goals when I set up my training plan. The long term goals give me something to focus on at the end of my plan and give me a reason for the plan initially. The short term goals give me markers throughout the plan to let me know if I'm on track, and give me something to keep me focused. I have ADD, so I get easily distracted. If I don't have something short term to focus on I end up way off the mark by the end of the season. There are a couple rules of thumb for setting your goals. They need to be realistic, try not to set yourself up for failure before you even get started. For instance, I would like to compete in and win the Mr. Universe this year. This is not a realistic goal for me, have ya seen me lately? Not sellin' many tickets to the gun show if ya know what I mean. You also don't want to make your goals TO easy to obtain. For instance, I am going to pick up all the dog poo in my yard from this winter by September. Granted, there's a lot of poo back there, but still, I should be able to do it in shorter amount of time..... hopefully. You want your goals to be attainable, but you also want to set your goals in a way that will encourage you to work hard to attain them. Challenge yourself, and you will improve your performance.

You also want to make your goals positive and stay away from negatives. For instance, I don't want to drown during the swim. While this is certainly something I would like to avoid, it's not a very effective tool for goal setting. Positive thoughts bring positive energy. Negative thoughts bring negative energy. I would like to finish the swim faster than at least one person. While this may seem like a negative, it's phrased in a positive tone. I could have said I don't want to be last, but again it has a negative in it which puts a negative spin on the whole goal. A positive attitude and confidence will go a long way in helping you to attain your goals.

I went down to Farmington this past weekend to see a friend I haven't seen in a long time. We worked together at UPS in Eagan. He's actually the reason I'm getting into Triathlons. You could say he's the poster child for setting goals and then beating them into a little pulpy mess of goal....ishness.... anyway, he's very inspiring. When I worked with him, he was a pretty hefty little dude. Strong as an ox, but wasn't very healthy weight wise. He decided he would like to be around to see his two cute-as-buttons daughters grow up and still be able to have fun with his grandkids someday. He set weight loss goals, nutritional goals, and he wanted to do a triathlon. He nailed all three. He literally came within 11 pounds of being half the man he used to be last summer, and he's completed a couple triathlons now. He was doing the triathlons on a mountain bike, but would like to be more competitive so he bought a road bike. I went down to help him finish setting it up, and get a little ride in with him at the same time. That's Andy to the right looking menacing with his new steed. Because, Andy is the reason I'm so keyed on doing a Triathlon this year, I've decided to start where he did and do the Lake Minnewaska Triathlon. Which actually works out better for me, because the bike and run are the same as the other tri I was considering, but the swim is about 300 meters shorter, so I'll have less time to drown, which is a good thing.

So, without further ado, or tado, or to do.... I'm not sure how the phrase actually goes, but anyway, here are my goals for this year.

Long Term -

1. Finish in the top half for my age group in the Lake Minnewaska Triathlon

• My goal for the swim portion is to finish, nothing major here. This is probably going to be my weakest event. I'm not going to have a ton of time to train, so if I can get out of the water without being too far behind I'll be happy.
  
• My goal for the bike portion is to average 23+ mph. Once upon a time I was able to average 25 over 25 miles and this is only 10 miles so I should be able to handle that.
  
• My goal for the run is to average a sub 7:30 mile. The run is 2.5 miles so this should be attainable as long as the calf heals.

1. This is technically supposed to be goal number 2, but for some reason after I put in the little bullet dealies I can't get back to my original list. So I'm wasting space to get back to number 2... newbies!!!
2. Okay, here we go, I will be competing, once again, in the Du State Du down in Iowa. It's a duathlon that I do with a friend from college. The goal here is to win the men's team division. We've done it once before and we're going to du it again! I do the bike portion of this race and I'm shooting for 25+ mph average. This will be tough because of the terrain. It's about 16 miles long and about 200 ft of it is flat. I've managed 22 mph with minimal training, so I'm hoping a more focused year will get me back on track

Short Term Goals

1. I am going to pick two 5k runs in June and July. The first run in June I'd like to go sub 8 min mile. For July I'd like to be sub 7:30.
   
2. I have a time trial course for the bike all laid out here in Duluth. It's about 18 miles long and has some pretty decent hills, one of which is at the finish. I'll be doing this once a month at the end of the month and would like to improve on the previous month by at least 10%. Did that make any sense? Well, I guess as long as I know what I'm supposed to be doing... right?
3. Get this weekly blog published by Wednesday of the following week.... Obviously this one is a work in progress. One of the purposes of this blog is to get me to focus on what I can do better. I get to take a hard look at the past week and look to improve on what mistakes I may have made. Normally, I get to the end of the season, miss a goal and look back and say.... "Oh yeah... oops". Hopefully, this will help, and it gives me a chance to ramble on about bike and fitness stuff without anyone really having to listen.... my wife is very thankful for that....
   

Now for the technical stuff, the week in review. Its been a rough start to the training plan. A strained calf muscle, an impending cold and a winter that won't die, have all added to a weak second week of training. I should talk injuries and how to properly deal with them since, you can easily learn from this mistake. The thing that really burns me is that I know better and I still didn't treat it right. Maybe I'll make that the topic for next week. Yup, that's right, I was the kid that kept putting my hand on the burner and repeated licking the freezing steel pipes just to see if the first 8 times was a fluke. Long story short I strained a calf muscle and instead of taking care of it, I ignored it, and then made it worse.... and then worse again.... Now I won't be running for a bit in order to help it along. Anyway, here's the week....

Monday - Ran with Tina for 3.24 miles. Calf muscle started to cramp up in the middle of the run. Gutted through it the best I could, but that may have been my undoing. It was pretty tight by the time we got home. A regular stretching routine would help avoid this, but it's one of my weaknesses... preventative maintenance that is.

Tuesday - 35 minutes riding on the trainer. The calf was a little better today, it's really a non-issue on the bike. It was a little tight at work, but the nice thing about my job is that it is very active so little injuries like this tend to loosen up during the day. I tried to stretch intermittently during the day to help. I have not iced at all at this point and in hindsight this is another one of those "DOH!" instances.

Wednesday - Scheduled as a day off and I almost went against the plan and did a workout anyway. It was really nice out and I was done with work earlier than I had planned, but I don't want to overdo it considering the calf is still a little tight.

Thursday - Started out with the intent of getting 3-5 miles running in. I ended up running for about 1 mile when the calf muscle I've been having problems with decided to revolt. It cramped up pretty bad, I had to stop and stretch for a bit. I tried to get going again and it decided that it had had enough and locked up. I ended up walking the mile and a half home... or should I say "limped". Ice and icy hot are in the plans. I'll avoid running for a bit to try and speed the recovery. More time on the bike is never a bad thing....

Friday - This is supposed to be form work on the bike. However, I took a little trip to the cities. So this is a day off. Which really is okay, since the calf was pretty tight today.

Saturday - First ride outdoors! What a beautiful thing. Andy and I rode 20 miles in Farmington, Mn. It was awesome. The roads were smooth, the dogs were chained, and the hills weren't overly large. There was a pretty good wind, but that's a good thing at this point in the year. Builds up the strength. Good for the legs. Good ride!

Sunday - Woke up to about 3 inches of snow on the ground... again, second time in 3 days that's happened. The calf is still a problem and on top of that, it seems I'm picking up my daughters cold that she has so graciously decided to loan me. Soooooo, it seems as though it would be a good day to rest. I actually went to bed at about 9 pm to try and combat the numerous ailments. Better luck next week.

Thanks again to all my adoring fan (yes, singular) for reading this week. Remember most of all, keep the rubber side down!

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