Goals and Plans for 2017

I've established my goals for this upcoming season, and have settled on a tentative race schedule. I was on the fence about a few races, but I think, in light of my goals, I've got it figured out.

Overall Goal: Have Fun

This is something I lost sight of last season. I was so focused on Nationals, that it was incredibly frustrating to injure myself a week before the race and then have the event itself not even be run as a triathlon. To have something I'd based my whole season around be taken away was really disappointing. I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket like that. So far I've always had one or two "A" races designated, but I'm not going to do that this year. I'll still plan my training around two "peaks", but I'm going to do my best not to put any pressure on myself to place well in those races.

Racing triathlons is fun, or at least it should be. That's what I'm going to focus on. No goals around placing - they're as much dependent on who shows up as they are on my own performance anyways. This is something I learned last season too - I found that hitting personal goals in terms of time-based milestones was so much more rewarding than any placing. So while I'm not going to stress about my performances, I do have some time-based goals in mind for this season.

1) Break 2:20 for an Olympic triathlon
2) Break 1 hour for a 40km time trial on the bike
3) Run sub-20 minutes off the bike in a Sprint triathlon
4) Run an open 10k under 40 minutes

Race schedule

It should be pretty apparent at this point that I've decided to skip Nationals this year. The goal last year was to compare myself to others, and that's not what this season is going to be about. I could race Nationals just for fun, but to be honest I'm not enthusiastic about the course. So in the interests of fun I'm doing races that I think I'll enjoy more. When I saw that they've moved up Nationals to June, that cemented my decision - it's perhaps the worst possible weekend in terms of how busy I'll be with work. So no agonizing over that decision.

The Long Sault Parkway looks like a fun course

I'll stick with the standards - Perth, Smiths Falls, and Brockville - and also add something new. I'm planning to head down to Sydenham for the race there, and if MEC puts on their "island hopper" tri down in Ingleside, I'd like to try that as well. It looks like a cool course. I'm also interested in checking out an MSC race, and Kingston is nice and close.

 No date yet for Perth, but this is my guess