Setting new goals for the year and motivation

[NotSoBigBen]

20 hours ago, Frosty said:

Some one asked my what (race) I'm training for, after seeing some intense rides on Strava.
I said "I'm not training for anything".
They then asked why I'm doing those workouts if I'm not training for anything.
"I enjoy it, and I need to be-prepared..."
and then I have to Google a quote that I keep forgetting the exact words... 
“The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.” – Brian Tracy

Legend has it that Willie Engelbrecht (MHDSRIP) when asked what he was training for would answer 'just in case' ... I like that!

[ChrisF]

17 minutes ago, Zebra said:

My O.C.D-ness EARNESTLY requests you to try for 365 hours for the year ahead; reason being that it is an ANNUAL goal, the are 36Five days in a year, and you are aiming for 36Four hours…!
 

Is that too much to ask…? 🤣

 

364,9km for @Frosty

[Eugene Oppelt]

On 1/9/2025 at 12:33 PM, The Ouzo said:

 

This is a discussion forum, maybe your ideas/thought dont work for me, but they might work for someone reading this thread.

I'd also like to see some input from the likes or @'Dale as I'm sure this touches on his skill set.

 

Thank you for the poke @The Ouzo

Setting goals are relatively easy. However, are they aligned with your unique life situation with its social roles and work responsibilities, your age, mental health status and general medical condition, etc.? That’s the performance challenge.

5 generalised ideas with relatively loose references that may be useful for the year 2025:

1. GET REAL: Avoid being delusional and want to live the PRO life with a training programme that runs your health, both psychological and physiological, into the ground. Most high-performance athletes have a soigneur of sorts, a strength coach, a cycling coach and, most importantly, ample rest and recovery time to execute 20 hour weeks.

2. SELF-AWARENESS: The higher one's life stress, it is wise to lower one's training stress. The lower one's life stress, the more one can stretch oneself and upsize one's training stress. However, this thing called Life is not predictable and formulated as one's 4 month training plan on TrainingPeaks. Be self-aware (far trickier and complicated than it sounds) and adjust to life's crosswinds and remarkable dynamics. Lowering one's goals is not easy as it requires egolessness as the Ego wants more and more.

3. DISCIPLINE: The more ambitious and lofty your performance goals are, e.g. top 100 in the Cape Epic or sub 3 in the CTCT or *insert your cool outcome goal here*, the more one has to adjust one's lifestyle to support that goal - more sleep, less socialisation, apply more nutrition science, specific training on the yoga mat and in the gym room, less alcohol, more spiritual time, less junk miles, and so on.

4. THE HIDDEN TAX: Being elite or sub-elite fit does not necessarily mean being healthy. Many professional athletes consult me because they perform excellently, however they have mental breakdowns or struggling with chronic ‘whatever' or "feel empty" or "lonely" or both all the time because of the demands of a high-performance lifestyle. Have a look in the mirror and ask yourself how much of the quality of living do you want to sacrifice in order to pursue your goals.

5. THE POWER OF CONSISTENCY: There are many so-called overcooked athletes that look good on Strava with seriaaas mileage and training hours. When deep exhaustion inevitably arrives, they stop for a week or few, only to have to return back to day 001 to rebuild, that is if they are mentally capable of resetting.  If you become gatvol of training and not even wanting to look at your equipment, you are 3 training sessions into overreach (different from functional overreach). If possible, even after an interval session, aim to have 10% left, so you are determined and motivated to go again the next day or, at the very least, after one rest day. That is where you can begin to push your limits further out.

Sterkte, julle!

 "The greatest teacher, failure is."
- Yoda 

Edited January 11 by 'Dale

[cadenceblur]

1 hour ago, Zebra said:

My O.C.D-ness EARNESTLY requests you to try for 365 hours for the year ahead; reason being that it is an ANNUAL goal, the are 36Five days in a year, and you are aiming for 36Four hours…!
 

Is that too much to ask…? 🤣

LOL, in all honesty, the time goal 🥅 is a bit of a ridiculous Strava thing and is just something that I put up as a Strava goal, not really fussed about achieving it. 
 But I know that I need a decent amount of quality training time which I generally get anyway. 

[betaboy]

[JayLow]

I reckon the thread just peaked thanks to @Frosty and @'Dale 

[Frosty]

5 hours ago, ChrisF said:

 

364,9km for @Frosty

Strava works in two numbers after the decimal point… so 364.99 😊😁😂

Edited January 11 by Frosty

[Frosty]

Two of us (Vaalies) that I am aware of, failed to succumb to the “lie in”, due some less than desirable conditions. The original plan (for me) was +/-79Km, 3.75 hours, about 150 load (hrTSS), and most importantly a breakfast with dirty dish water.

It turned out to be less than planned by 12km, 1 hour, 45 hrTSS and no breakfast, but a semi-decent coffee.

Tomorrow’s a planned rest day, and it doesn’t matter that I’m an hour off my target from today and therefore the week. I don’t have to catch up, as it won’t make a difference if I do or not.

But I might go for a short ride, tomorrow morning just because I can and it’s nice to have a chilled day.

Edited January 11 by Frosty
Grammar police called

[Frosty]

SMART was mentioned a few times, but not SMARTer:

The E=evaluate, and final R=reward

Evaluate what you did, both success and failure, so you know what to change for next time.

Reward can be yourself, as well as others (if they were involved); think when a TdF winner presents the entire team with a thank you gift).

[daveno7]

13 hours ago, 'Dale said:

Thank you for the poke @The Ouzo

Setting goals are relatively easy. However, are they aligned with your unique life situation with its social roles and work responsibilities, your age, mental health status and general medical condition, etc.? That’s the performance challenge.

5 generalised ideas with relatively loose references that may be useful for the year 2025:

1. GET REAL: Avoid being delusional and want to live the PRO life with a training programme that runs your health, both psychological and physiological, into the ground. Most high-performance athletes have a soigneur of sorts, a strength coach, a cycling coach and, most importantly, ample rest and recovery time to execute 20 hour weeks.

2. SELF-AWARENESS: The higher one's life stress, it is wise to lower one's training stress. The lower one's life stress, the more one can stretch oneself and upsize one's training stress. However, this thing called Life is not predictable and formulated as one's 4 month training plan on TrainingPeaks. Be self-aware (far trickier and complicated than it sounds) and adjust to life's crosswinds and remarkable dynamics. Lowering one's goals is not easy as it requires egolessness as the Ego wants more and more.

3. DISCIPLINE: The more ambitious and lofty your performance goals are, e.g. top 100 in the Cape Epic or sub 3 in the CTCT or *insert your cool outcome goal here*, the more one has to adjust one's lifestyle to support that goal - more sleep, less socialisation, apply more nutrition science, specific training on the yoga mat and in the gym room, less alcohol, more spiritual time, less junk miles, and so on.

4. THE HIDDEN TAX: Being elite or sub-elite fit does not necessarily mean being healthy. Many professional athletes consult me because they perform excellently, however they have mental breakdowns or struggling with chronic ‘whatever' or "feel empty" or "lonely" or both all the time because of the demands of a high-performance lifestyle. Have a look in the mirror and ask yourself how much of the quality of living do you want to sacrifice in order to pursue your goals.

5. THE POWER OF CONSISTENCY: There are many so-called overcooked athletes that look good on Strava with seriaaas mileage and training hours. When deep exhaustion inevitably arrives, they stop for a week or few, only to have to return back to day 001 to rebuild, that is if they are mentally capable of resetting.  If you become gatvol of training and not even wanting to look at your equipment, you are 3 training sessions into overreach (different from functional overreach). If possible, even after an interval session, aim to have 10% left, so you are determined and motivated to go again the next day or, at the very least, after one rest day. That is where you can begin to push your limits further out.

Sterkte, julle!

 "The greatest teacher, failure is."
- Yoda 

thank you...this is brilliant advice and experience being shared...

['Kaze Pete]

On 1/11/2025 at 11:42 AM, NotSoBigBen said:

Legend has it that Willie Engelbrecht (MHDSRIP) when asked what he was training for would answer 'just in case' ... I like that!

My go-to response is "Nothing, I just like to be tired" 😀
If you ask me at the Crater Cruise, I might give an honest answer 😁

[GLuvsMtb]

I've also hit the 10k km mark on Strava in 2024. I can ascribe this to needing to destress a lot in 2024. Most were e bike kms and being able to stay in zone 2 for the bulk of the kms certainly did wonders for my base. Go2Berg was comfortable, as was PE Plett and the other events I did. In 2025 I am feeling strong enough to hit the analog bike again and I have 3 main goals:

1. To manage my blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol to be consistently in the healthy range

2. To lose at least 1kg a month to get me back to my racing weight

3. To do my 5th Attakwas in 2026. I haven't done one since 2017 due to a torn meniscus late 2019, covid in 2020 and a series of large work related projects. 

to achieve my goals I have the following targets:

1. Focus on my eating plan
2. Get enough rest (7 hours of sleep a night, with over 70 sleep score)
3. Get quality training in. Junk miles were mentioned in this thread and I guess I did a lot of those in 2024. With a decent base to work from, and being fully recovered from my meniscus I will be swopping my e bike rides for more analogue bike rides.
4. I find that entering for a few smaller events helps to keep me honest and gets me on the bike on days when it would be easy to give it a skip. 

My approach is by no way scientific, but works for me. After 19 years of proper cycling (excluding school and varsity when it was essentially a mode of transport opposed to a training / lifestyle thing) I can happily say that my success rate in over 50 endurance / extreme / multi day events is about 98%. Success being measured in finishing comfortably. The events I did not finish were: a 3 day race called the renosterveld 3 day race (I succumbed to heat exposure), 1 Tankwa Trek (I did not train well enough and was overweight) and Cape Pioneer Trek (my partner and my goals were not aligned, so I rode way too hard, and coupled with a stripped freewheel body on stage 4 I elected to put my bike on the pissie-bussie that day rather than walk-running the last 18km that day).