Goals for 2010

In my last post about my race schedule for 2010, someone named Peter, asked me the following in comment, "Let's here about your goals for the year? What do you need to achieve to make this race schedule a success or not? As an outsider it looks like your plan is about participation rather than performance."

It was a great comment and question, and I felt it needed a post all to itself. Certainly, one can look at my race schedule and see it is MUCH different than what my past schedules have looked like, and that is on purpose.

Yes, participation is one of the main goals, because I will be stressing draft-legal racing this year, which my experience is limited in. I want to be an elite coach for ITU racing in the future, and this is one of the best ways to learn more about what it takes. I have been doing long course and Ironman so long, I want to change my approach. This is why I also hired Bob Seebohar.

I don't plan on just toeing the line, and that's all. I have goals for the races. Some of the races are so tough, just getting into them is a goal, like the Pan Am's and the World Cup, as you have to meet a standard. I have just made a conscious decision to do things differently this year, and I will not judge my success of the season based solely on results or prize money. I will no longer try to make a living solely as an athlete. I used to drive myself crazy with that stuff, and that's not going to happen again.

So I have individual goal races, but they are also based more on my fitness at the time of the events, because I have never had to come back from such a downtime, nor from long course racing down to short course.

I'm not going to post my goals yet, because in a lot of ways they are unclear and undetermined based on my fitness and experience, but I know I want to be on the start line at those races, and that is the first key to performing well.

We will see how it goes. Right now I'm just taking it one day at a time, one workout at a time, until I feel like I'm competitive.

Vance