Goal Setting

While Bradley Wiggins was wearing the Yellow Jersey in the 2012 Tour de France, someone threw tacks on the road causing punctures for a number of riders including one of his main rivals Cadel Evans. Wiggins did the honourable thing, slowed the peloton and allowed Evans to catch up before resuming the race. After the race, Wiggins said this:

  

"What can you do? It's nothing that we can control, we're there to be shot at, literally. If that happened in football in a stadium you'd have CCTV, but we're extremely vulnerable. Hopefully it won't happen again, but there's nothing we can do. We just have to get on with it, don't we?"

"There's enough police on this race to hopefully find those people and send them to a football match or something."

These are not cycling fans

That event captures what is great about cycling. It happens in the real world. The stars are, literally, touchable and consequently they are down to earth and connected to the spectators who are almost as much a part of the event as the riders.

Football/soccer on the other hand. Well, it's not quite like that is it?

Happy New Year, Time for Some Goals

The chances are small that you are reading this on January the 1st. Not least because I'm publishing it in November. But whenever you read it make today your New Years Day.

Millions of people make New Years resolutions on January 1st. But there is lots of evidence and advice from psychologists to say it is exactly the wrong time to do it. After the festive season the chances are you are tired and broke. The weather in the Northern Hemisphere will be cold and the days short. So, the chances of being in the right frame of mind to stick with your resolutions are slim. And you were probably drunk when you made them.

So why not make your resolution right now? It'll be the first step in your training plan and you won't even get out of breath.

Why You Need Goals

There is a reason for the link to football at the start of this post. Football people love to talk about goals. But they only ever have one type of goal on their mind.

A football goal. As if you didn't know.

In most other sports athletes think about and work towards goals all the time. They have goals for their season, goals for their training, goals for their races. Team Sky famously had a goal for a British rider to win the Tour de France within five years of being formed, something that had never been done. They did it.

Quite simply, if you don't have a goal, how do you know what you are trying to achieve or where you want to go?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a great deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where...” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
 

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

If you set a good goal, decide where you want to be, you'll find you make changes to your life every day (often without even realising it) that help you to get there.

How to Set Goals

I have yet to find a better way to set good goals than to use S.M.A.R.T criteria, which have become a cliche in business precisely because they work. SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

Consider how you might apply those criteria to two common goals related to cycling.

Many of us say something like, "I'd love to lose a tonne of weight". As a SMART goal that could become, "I'd like to lose 5 kilos (specific, measurable, more attainable than a tonne) so I get better at climbing hills (relevant) and look buff (not relevant) in time for the York Naked Bike Ride in June (timely and now we see the buff bit was relevant).

Need good saddle creme for this ride.

Many of us also say something like, "I'm going to get fitter". As a SMART goal that could become, "I managed a 25 mile bike ride with my mates last summer, I want to do the 80-mile White Rose Classic sportive in under 6 hours in July."

Once you have worked out your goal, write it down and stick it where you will see it every day. Inside the bathroom cabinet is a good place, or make it into a screen saver on the office computer.

Go on. Do it now. It's New Years Day.

Summary

It is important to set goals so you know what you are working towards. A cycling season is long, so it is easy to be distracted. Make sure that your goals are SMART and that you state them clearly. Write them down, find friends to share them, tell your family, consider being sponsored to give you extra motivation. Find an event and put your name down.

And when you've done that, give yourself a little pat on the back. You are much closer towards achieving something than you were when you woke up this morning.

And what's more, you've started your training without turning a pedal.


...