Another New Year - Make 2009 Special

Posted Jan 14, 2009
8,254

Don't curse your indoor trainer... Start the new year out with a plan!

Dear Fellow Cyclists It's the end of 2008 and the beginning of a brand new year. Another chance to make the new year your best cycling year yet. This is the year you are finally going to make cycling the priority it should have in your life and you are going to make time for it and accomplish new goals. I don't know about you, but every new year starts out like this for me, and then life happens. However, even facing the realities of a busy life, cycling is our play time. It's one of the things that adds joy to our lives. All work and no play makes for a boring life. So set at least one new cycling goal for 2009. Maybe it's doing a new ride or race, getting a new bike, riding more miles than last year or maybe it's something more bold (RAAM anyone?). But make this year a special cycling year in some way. Set yourself a goal and then track it and work towards it. It will add a new dimension to your cycling and keep your hobby fresh. So what's mine? I am going to train for and race cyclocross next year. I got into it just a bit this year and would like to be competitive next fall. Happy New (Cycling) Year David Ertl About Cyclesport Coaching

Newsletter excerpt START THE NEW YEAR WITH A PLAN I like the Air Force advertisement, "Aim High". If you aim high, you have a chance of achieving great things. Even if you don't accomplish all that you set out to, you will likely accomplish a heck of a lot more than if you didn't aim high in the first place. If you don't set goals, it is almost certain you will not achieve great things. It's essential to develop some key goals for your cycling year, and then develop a plan to execute on your goals. The plan I'm referring to here is a training plan. When I put cyclists on structured training plans, they improve. A structured plan does a couple of important things. First, it creates some expectations for the cyclist which creates some training discipline. The cyclist is much more likely to train and train well if there is a plan. Second, a good plan incorporates several quality workouts each week. Left to their own devices, cyclists tend to do too many mediocre rides and not enough really hard as well as really easy rides. Plans should include workouts which improve all the various aspects of cycling fitness: endurance, aerobic threshold, anaerobic/VO2 max, strength, sprinting, spinning, and of course, recovery. Dwight Eisenhower once said "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." What he was saying is we rarely follow a plan the way it is created, but going through the process of having a plan makes one able to adapt the plan as circumstances change. I rarely follow my plan the way it's written every day of the week, but I know how to modify it and achieve the goals I set out for the week even though it didn't work out quite as originally planned. So the fact that you have a plan is a good start to being able to accomplish your weekly goals, even though you may not do every workout that's listed. So if you don't have your own coach and don't currently use a training plan, and would like to take your training to the next level, do yourself a favor and start using a training plan this year. I know it will help you train better and harder, and allow you to aim and reach higher. View the entire newsletter (If you found this interesting and helpful, click here to see the complete newsletter and to subscribe”)

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