What A Year!

Sometimes it’s difficult to get your feelings or ideas to come across on a screen or in print the way you can face to face. A simple tone or inflection in our voice can completely change the meaning or feeling of a phrase. For instance, “what a year!” could come across with great disdain or a feeling of eagerness to put that year behind. Those same two words in a different tone could infer that it was an amazing year full of great times. In my case, both interpretations of that phrase are perfectly suitable ways to sum up 2019.

Nearly a year ago I set myself some goals for the coming race season.

1. Finish BT Epic in under 5 hours.

2. Finish mid pack in my first season racing cat 1.

3. Set a new pr @ Lumberjack.

Number one was pretty important to me (it was #1 for a reason, duh) the others were there to keep me focused on the task at hand. Let’s be honest, I don’t even know why I set the last one as a goal. I didn’t even want to do that race again! Nonetheless, if you’ve read any of my ramblings from this year you’ll no doubt know that I was knocked for a loop in July with two bouts of a-fib that rendered me pretty much debilitated. As a result I also had two cardioversions and a surgery to burn areas of my heart that were conducting electrical signals improperly. Were there tears shed while I was sitting there incapacitated by a-fib? Yes. It’s hard not to think of your own mortality when your heart is racing and you black out just walking to the bathroom. That was the lowest point of the past year for me. After getting back into sinus rhythm and talking with my Dr. about our course of action there was some relief. Many prayers were offered up by me and for me. You can read more about surgery in the two previous posts, so I won’t bore you with that here. Back to those goals.

Lumberjack was a bust! I will admit it was entirely a mental defeat. At the 66 mile pit stop I was having some mild knee pain and decided not to push through it despite the fact that I was well in line to complete my goal of a PR. My thought was since I’d already finished the race the two previous years I had nothing to prove and I didn’t want to risk a knee problem stopping me from my #1 goal. For the first time in my life I posted a DNF by my name. That was the hardest part. Looking at my name on the roster and seeing those three letters next to it.

Goal number two was completed. By the last couple of races in the season I was getting my Cat1 legs and moving up into the middle of the field.

BT Epic was the focus of all of my training. I had tried the past two years to get into the sub 5 hour club to no avail. I won’t bore you with the details since you can scroll back a bit and read the whole story, but I broke the 5 hour mark with authority. There’s no telling how close I am to my “ceiling”, but I’m going to have to work hard to better my time this year.

What a year indeed! I saw really good times and some not so good. I’m thrilled to have made it through to the other side and excited for what 2020 has to bring. Lately I’ve listened to a few podcasts on goals and goal setting, so I may change some of my goals for this year or at least change the way I structure them. Some may be a little more quantitative, and I think in order to progress I need to make a few process goals as well.

1. Complete an ultra-endurance gravel race. I’d say complete DK200, but since there is a lottery just to get in, I have no control over whether I can compete. I will sign up, but if I do not make it I will fall back and do The Epic 150 instead.
2. Nutrition optimization. What this looks like right now, I don’t know. I am reading a book on nutrition periodization currently and making notes as I go. In order to train more and gain strength my nutrition will need to support that. Avoid deep fried foods, journal my food intake.
3. Complete mid volume training plans. Until this past September I had only ever used low volume plans. Mid volume, while more challenging to schedule, yielded great improvements.
4. Move the needle on my FTP up by 15 watts. As I write this my workouts are based around a 355 watt ftp and I’m completing everything with precision, so I feel it is pretty accurate. I think 15 watts is attainable.
5. BT Epic cannot be absent from this list. Last year in order to meet my goal really only shaved 10 minutes off my previous best. Since I crushed that oy an additional 20+ minutes I don’t see any huge gains in my near future. In reality I think setting a time goal of under 4:30 is realistic.

For the moment we’ll leave this as is. When it is evident that I can clarify any of these or add more detail I will do so.

Here’s to a great 2020!