Stronger, Fitter, Faster

Stronger

Twelve years behind a desk does things to your body. For the first time in ten years I've started hitting a gym 3x a week but that doesn't mean I can muster too many pushups just yet.

Fitter

Lose a serious amount of weight. This is definitely key to making everything else work, so I'll be focusing on dropping pounds to get not only into a healthy range of BMI, but to also increase my endurance and fitness.

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Some Goals for 2009

Like JD, I'm not a fan of resolutions, I'm a fan of goals. Some goals require more than one year to accomplish and resolutions are just ways of setting yourself up for disappointment. Last year my goals were to ride at least a thousand miles and two thousand if possible, ride Cycle Oregon, and both race more often and do better in races. I pretty much hit all of those except the "do better in races" which is why I'm here now.

Everyone I talked to about getting faster said the next step was to get a cycling coach. After reviewing and interacting with about a dozen different coaches in the area (and talking to a few longtime coaches about what to look for in a local coach), I settled on one and our first planning session is this coming Monday. There are lots of places you can read about cycling coaches, but I found very little about what it's like being coached. My hope is to cover how hard the training regimen is on my body and through testing and racing see if it had a major positive effect on me. Since it's New Year's Day, I might as well put down my goals for the year:

My goals for 2009:

• Ride a lot more, try to hit 5,000 miles ridden in 2009
• Ride Cycle Oregon again, including all the optional extra riding
• Move up in classes for cyclocross, from beginner to Masters C
• Finish at least in the top half of my class in races on days where I felt good
• Win a cyclocross race at some point
• Race the short-track series in Portland and the one in Salem
• Try a road race of some sort (either Eugene Roubaix, the Banana Belt series, and/or a PIR crit)
• I'd like to see a noticeable improvement from coaching so I know the time and energy were worth it
• Continue with regular trips to the gym, get stronger
• Do 50 pushups non-stop
• Maybe try a different form of riding/racing (either Alpenrose Velodrome practice night or a XC mt bike race or something)
• Get a power meter and learn how to use it
• Sponsor a team and help build it
• Get my weight down in the 190-200lb range

I'm mostly worried about my two most difficult goals, which are to lose ~30lbs and find the time to ride 100 miles a week, every week, for a year. I have the strong feeling doing better at races is going to require that I trim some major weight off and ride enough so I'm conditioned for full race output. At 36 years of age, those things are often easier said than done. It's going to require a lot of discipline year-round to not eat too much junk and to always be taking 1 and 2 hour rides whenever I can.

It's a full plate of things to do for the year and I don't know if I'll hit them all, but I'll revisit this post later in the year to see how well I'm shaping up on it.

Posted on January 1, 2009 in goals

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