Goals

I've made a few references to goals in previous posts:. Here, here and here.

So what are they and how did I come up with them.

I have to preface this all be saying I have no idea as to whether or not I'll even come close to meeting these. I've never prepared for any event with any goal more specific than "I just want to finish" or "I want to run it faster than last year." 

It's more than a little ballsy for someone who's never done a tri before to decide where he wants to finish in the pack--but that is what's driving this.

The first event I'm running is the Summer Open Sprint Triathlon. I looked at last year's results and found the middle of the pack. Then I took that bottom half and looked at the average time for each event and transition. So far, so good...right?

All right. Those averages are thetimes I'm aiming for. Then there is where I am now. In between is the gap I'm aiming to close. So for example, right now I'm swimming about 40 yards a minute. By the time the tri rolls around, I'd like to be closer to 49.50 per minute (stretch goal, I know). There's about 19 weeks between now and the race so I need to swim at an average rate of half a yard faster each week. It makes a chart like this one:

I have no illusions about actually meeting these goals in a nice straight line. In a future post I'll show how I'm doing vs. the goal.

For now, I'm off until my swim on Saturday. We're headed up to Red Feather Lakes tomorrow (weather allowing) to have a late Christmas celebration with my folks. No, I'm not working out up there. High temps of 5, 14 and 24 are going to keep me in near the fire!

I am going to swim on Sunday after we get back home and that will be my first time to try the Finis Tempo trainer.