Looking ahead to 2016

[Day 2]

Continuing on from yesterday's post, I'd like to talk about what my goals are for this year and how I plan on working towards those goals. A lot of my goals this year are more process goals than they are performance goals. The main reason for that is that I'm not a great athlete, I don't really do what I do because I'm good at it, I do it because I really enjoy it. I find performance goals can sometimes be somewhat limited because honestly I don't yet have a great grasp on what reasonable goals are speed/pace wise and what level of work is necessary to achieve them. I have a lot of experience with regards to time-based goal setting in competitive swimming, but in the world of triathlon, I'm way out of my depth. That said, I do want to improve and be better this year than I was the last, but I think at my level, the best way to go about improving in the context of race performance is by focusing on improving the details of my training process. The gains will follow the work, so rather than focusing on how fast I want to be, I would like to focus on how to train as best as possible.

As yesterday's post indicated, the biggest improvement I would like to see this year is more consistency and no flaming burnout towards the end of a bigger training block the way I experienced this year. Going into 2015, I hadn't really put any amount of thought into what the grand scheme of my year was going to look like, and as a result, I hit many unexpected road blocks because I wasn't looking out for them. I'd like to try to prevent that this year.

My big overarching plan is to have a quality 3-4 month build up into my two main spring triathlons (Collegiate Nationals and Wildflower), then take May through July as sustained plateau months. I don't necessarily want to take them off or take them easy, but there is a lot of turbulence during those months (finals, June preceptorship in Boston, the wedding in July, moving Henry from Boston down to St. Louis) so instead of stressing myself out about forcing out training time when it's not there, I will just try to maintain fitness without too much emphasis on structure. Late July into early August will be another big but short build into the Chicago Triathlon at the end of August and whatever fall races the club does (including our nationals qualifier for next year). I will still be going straight into a half marathon build for the Rock 'n' Roll half, then I will take the rest of the year as an actual off-season (instead of trying to push another training block for another race in there and burning out). I would like to litter small road races and maybe swim meets throughout that just as low key fun situations to compete in because I think competing more is generally better for me, but we'll see what my life budget looks like and make those decisions as opportunities arise. Hopefully starting the year by separating the important months from the maintenance months will help keep me on the right track throughout the year in terms of mentality, intensity, and volume.

Another one of my big goals this year is to pick up the slack on biking and swimming. I've made a lot of improvements to my running, but at the expense of my swimming, and my biking has always not really been going anywhere. I'm going to try to get out for more group rides when it comes to biking and I'm going to aim for more consistency with regards to swim practices and lifting (which benefits my swimming enormously). With regards to run mileage, I'm going to try and get consistently above 20 miles per week with the ultimate goal of being consistently around 25 miles per week. That might be ambitious given everything else I want to do too, but I like setting my bars high.

I also really want to put more focus on the more peripheral parts of my training, like core/stability work, mobility, and stretching/recovery. In making my training plan for the spring, I've tried as much as possible to explicitly place these things into my schedule in order to make sure that they actually get done. We'll see how good I am about following through on my plans.

The final goal that I have is to be more present. Henry pointed something out to me the other day (as he often does), which is that I have a tendency of living x number of days/months/years in the future (or occasionally, in the past) but I'm really bad at just taking it one day at a time and focusing on the here and now. That's something I'd really like to work on. I think a certain amount of always looking ahead is necessary in order for me to stay on track but I think in order for me to execute on any given day, I do really need to try and focus on being present. Now the rest of my goals are easy to work into a plan or schedule, but this one is a little harder. (Although I did try to work it into my schedule by setting aside a block of time each weekend to plan, which will hopefully minimize my need to double check my scheduling compulsively during the week.) I'm not sure what the best way to go about this is other than to just do it. I might leave myself sticky note reminders around the house so I have a constant presence (past-me) to remind future-me to stay on track and just focus on the day at hand. I'll try to report back about how this one goes. (And if it goes poorly, I'm sure Henry will let me know.)

So those are my big goals for 2016! The real fun starts tomorrow with the first workout of 2016, can't wait! (:

Much love,
Jess