2019 Goal Planning

It’s that time of year again!

My TT bike is gathering dust, and the leaves are changing color. It’s fall, and my season has wrapped up. If you want to hear a recap – check out my post “End of Season Reflection”. At the end of a season, I start to take the time to reflect on what I accomplished, where I improved, and what I’d like to work on moving forward. I write it down, and this is the first year I’ll be sharing it publically here. I want to be held accountable, and I need something to think about all winter long with early mornings spent on the trainer.

For the first time this year I’m setting goals that are sport and non-sport. I want to improve my cycling ability, but also the community around it.

Goal 1 (Sport):

I want to be competitive in the road racing discipline in Category 1/2/3 by the time of Green Mountain Stage Race in September 2019.

How I developed this goal:

Initially, I thought my goal would be Cat 2 cyclist by October of 2019 (which I understand is pretty gutsy). After examining what I want my season to look like, I revised my goal to the one above. I started by looking at the races I really want to excel at, and where I want to be competitive.

My target races are the following:

Woodstock Women’s Grand Prix – Woodstock was my first road race last year, and I only have great things to say about the whole production. If you’re curious about this race, sign up! You won’t be disappointed (women only, sorry guys!). The course is beautiful, the race support spectacular, and the climb is a true grinder.

Bear Mountain – Because of the calendar, this isn’t technically an “A” race (it’s typically the weekend immediately following Woodstock), but if there’s a road race nearby, I’m going to it.

Giro del Cielo – Another GC race weekend! I had a lot of fun last year, and won the Women’s Cat 4 / 5  road race, TT, and General Classification. The weekend racing format is a blast with a team and I want to do it again. But in 2019, I want to be racing Cat 3, not Cat 4 / 5.

Green Mountain Stage Race – I love Vermont and climbing, so sign me up! This will be a new race for me and I think a great learning experience. I’m hoping I can contend with some top level riders for the weekend.

After I wrote down these races I thought – okay they’re road races (Check!), and I really want to develop myself to race at a higher level. The jump from Cat 4 to Cat 3 (or more commonly Cat 1/2/3) in road racing is HUGE! The difference in length of races at Woodstock is 35 miles for Cat 4, compared with a 65 mile race for Cat 1/2/3, and the rest of the races follow a similar pattern. I love a good two-hour race, but I want to continue to grow as an endurance racer. That is how I came to my write my goal. I figured starting out the season as Cat 4 with no points, I had to give myself some time to race and score points. I’ll be racing some crits early on, and road races when available, but I’m going to try really hard to get my upgrade by Memorial Day Weekend. After that, my eyes are on developing myself as a cyclist at the next level.

Now for my non-racing goals:

Goal 2 (Semi-Sport)

Identify my diet and nutrition and work to categorize, improve, and share my eating habits. I’m not entirely sure how to go about this just yet, but I’m working on trying new recipes, tracking what I eat, how I change things up and trying to learn some better on the go foods for an active 9-5 er. If you have any recommendations, please share!

Goal 3 (Community)

Contribute and improve the cycling community. I know this is so broad! I’m not sure what I will do at this point, but in sport I’ve always been so lucky to be surrounded by really kind and supportive people, especially women. I want to contribute too! This is still somewhat open-ended, any suggestions are welcome!

If you have goals for next year, put them out there. Now that I’ve written my goals down, November is right around the corner and so is the beginning of my training plan! If you need me, I’ll be on the trainer in the wee hours this winter. Happy training!