Setting goals for the new year

Its hard to believe that the new year is already well underway.  That makes it time to start looking ahead to what goals I want to have.

Last year was pretty simple, just a couple of goals related to my cycling.  Increase my yearly miles to 2,500 and increase my long rides for the year to include at least one full century ride.  One goal made, one not.  Now however, I am running a lot more, so I have to start balancing the hours that takes with the hours cycling takes.  That makes my goals a bit different this year.

In looking ahead, I am thinking of targeting specific events instead of overall miles this year.  I also plan on getting out to either run or bike 4 times per week.  That's it.

For my running, the big event is to run a marathon towards the end of the year.  The one I have in mind is the Outer Banks Marathon in November.  That should be enough time to build up my base miles in order to finish that distance.  As part of the buildup for that, I am looking at doing some half marathons.  The first on my list is the Tobacco Road half marathon.  That comes early in the year, March 20, which should be doable.  Those are the two main events for the year.  I will probably do a few more 10K races, as well as another half marathon sometime between March and November, but which of these to do is very much up in the air at this point in time.

For my cycling, I would like to do the Bike MS in New Bern again.  I have done that the past two years and greatly enjoyed it.  However, with that just a month or so prior to the Outer Banks Marathon, I am a bit unsure about the timing.  The decision on this will probably come sometime mid summer.  There are several events I have done in the last few years that I plan on repeating.  All of them were fundraisers for good organizations which I feel deserve support, and they put on good events that I enjoy.  Here's the short list.

Ride for Their Lives fundraiser for Carolina Animal Rescue and Adoption.
Cup and Cone Ride MS fundraiser put on by MS events.
Raven Rock Ramble fundraiser for the UNC Kidney Center.
Ride for the Land fundraiser put on by the Triangle Land Conservancy.
Tammy Lynn Center fundraising ride.

I have been enjoying tracking all of my fitness activities with my Garmin Forerunner 310XT.  If you want a chance to win one, there is a giveaway going on at the DC Rainmaker blog.  You can see how to enter here.  Lots of good reviews on sports gadgets there.

One thing I am looking at for the new year is how best to look over all of the data I have collected over the past few years from the different devices I have used.  All the data from the last two years is stored on my laptop in Garmin Training Center and on the web at Garmin Connect.  Prior to that, I used a mix of Polar heart monitors.  My Polar 625X stored its info on my laptop with the Polar Training software.  Prior to that, my Polar F11 stored its data on the Polar Personal Training web site.  I also have some training data on the Nike+ web site from when I was running with the Nike+ foot pod connected to an iPod.  I have started to look at ways to export all of the above into one place.

I started out with Sport Tracks software, which let me pull in all the data from the Garmin site, as well as all the data from my Polar software on my laptop.  That was a good start, but I couldn't get in all the other data.  I also did not like how the data was presented, and I missed being able to access the data from the web.  So, I started looking at different web based training sites.

I used the Garmin Connect site as a reference point since I like the look of their training calendar and its ease of use.  The only drawback for it is that I only have data from when I started using Garmin as my cycling computer.

After some searching, I found the site Buckeye Outdoors.  The site is free to use, and allowed me to bring in my Garmin files, my Nike+ data, and all the Polar data that was on my laptop.  I was not able to transfer the data from the Polar Personal Training web site.  You can see how my data looks in calendar form on the Buckeye Outdoors site here.  Not the best looking calendar, but it does allow for me to easily pull into my blog stuff such as the workout totals and my races side bars.

After a bit more searching I found the site Runningfreeonline.  Also a free training site.  I was successful in bringing in all of my data into this site.  Here is what their calendar view looks like.  Again, not a great looking site, but one that has a lot of extra stuff, such as race prediction calculators, and lots of different ways to view data.  As an example, here is a pie chart of last years hours and miles broken down by activity type.  Pretty cool!  I'm still playing around with the different options for storing my workout data, but it is nice to finally have it all in one place.  Both sites also allow me to set up training schedules, which will be very useful as I keep ramping up my distances in my running.

Now, I have to start thinking about the best training schedule for running 26.2 miles.

See you on the road.

2010 Year End Update

2010 is finished and its time to look over last years statistics and goals.

While I didn't meet all of my goals, it turned out to be a good year.  The overall goals were to cycle for 2,500 miles and ride in my first century.  I did accomplish my first century ride, but fell short of the 2,500 miles goal. However, I feel that was offset by getting a bit more serious about my running.

Here is how 2010 and 2009 compared.

Cycling
	Rides	Total Distance	Max Distance
2010	83	1925	100
2009	70	1641	87
Running
	Runs
2010	86	370	8
2009	45	175	5.3

For 2011, I am thinking of focusing mainly on my running.  I would like to do a marathon towards the end of the year.  I am not sure how that will impact my cycling.  Some of the training plans I am looking over call for a couple of days of cross training per week, so my cycling will now be my cross training instead of my main focus, which means my cycling mileage will be less for the next year.

See you on the road.