Planning 2016: Goal Setting

You can't plan out how to get somewhere unless you know where you want to go, so the first step in developing a good plan is setting goals/objectives. The holidays haven't been ideal for consistent training, but come January I'm hoping to get going with a solid structured training plan.

Here are my goals for 2016:

Swim: Given that I don't see myself devoting any more than two days a week to swimming, I don't think it's realistic to expect any significant improvements in this area. All I'm really hoping for is to improve my race times, even if just a little bit. It's tough to really compare my pool times with my race times since I'm so much faster in a wetsuit, but what I'm really interested in is bringing down my Critical Swim Speed. I'm currently around 1:55/100 and I'd like to get down to around 1:45ish. Last year I think I focused too much on my standalone 100m times rather than extended efforts, so this year along with my CSS I'll look to my 400m times as a measure of progress.

Bike: I'm excited to see what training with power under a more structured, properly periodized plan can do for my bike riding. The focus here is raising my Functional Threshold Power. I'd like to get into the 230-240W range if possible. Even if I do this I won't really know how this affects my bike speed until I get out on the road again in the spring. The ultimate goal is be able to ride faster while hitting T2 with fresher legs. A more specific (non-race) goal is to do a 40km TT in under an hour. Not too sure when I'll try this, but I will make an attempt next year.

Run: This is the lowest hanging fruit for me. I know there is lots of time to make up here, and I already feel like I've improved significantly even since my last race. I feel like breaking 20 minutes for a standalone 5km is attainable for me (I did 21:15 in October), and ideally I can do that in a race. My priority is Olympic distance, so I'm really focused on getting my 10km times down. Beating the 52ish minutes I did in Brockville should be easy. Most of that is developing run fitness, but managing my effort on the bike will also factor in there, so my bike training (and ability to pace) will come into play. I'd love to break 45 minutes, so that's my goal for my Olympic races next year.

Overall: At this point I'm planning 4 races again, 3 of which will be repeats for me. So obviously in each of those 3 I already have a good benchmark time to try to eclipse. An easy goal is to just beat my previous times. It makes no sense to set specific times goals until closer to the races when I have a better sense of my capabilities. But overall I would like to be a solid top-5 finisher in my races, and at some point make an overall podium.

Next up I'll go over the plan itself.