Testers and GOALS

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Last week was a hard week of training.  I call it a tester week.  I’ve been riding a fair amount and was ready to see what kind of shape I’m in. 

Brushy Mountain is about 30 miles from Mooresville and is the closest major climb.  We climb both sides of the mountain and there are several climbs around the mountain.  I had a day off and decided to give it a go.  The backside of Brushy is an up and down climb about 6.22 miles long.  I’ve always wanted to do the climb in less than 25 minutes. I did the climb in 24:55.  This was a personal best for me.  I continued down the other side of Brushy and did the Litha Springs climb in a time of 11:50.  Litha Springs is a super steep climb that covers about 2.07 miles.  Litha Springs connects to the Brushy climb at mile 3.5, so it’s a steep climb, real steep for over half of the climb.

After Litha Springs, I climbed the frontside of Brushy.  The climb 5.49 miles and it took me 23 minutes.

The next day I took the 69er to Lake Norman State park and did a hard lap, basically a time trial.  Lake Norman is actually two trails that total about 13 miles – I do both trails and consider that one lap.  My goal was to do a lap in under an hour and I did the lap in 58:13. 

Two hard days down, one more to go.  I have a riding buddy that I ride with regularly and decided to do one of our more hilly routes.  My legs were pretty tired but I went as hard as I could up the hills.  Surprisingly my legs held up and I hit it as hard as I could.  It was a good lesson in that I learned that I can do more than my brain wants me to do.

The best thing about the Tester week is that I was able to set some early season benchmarks.  I have some times to better as the season progresses.  Now I can set some season goals.

1. Win a Sport Class Mountain Bike Race
2. Move up to the Expert Class
3. Set the Cat 3 Time Trial at Lowes Speedway
4. Win one Cat 3 Road Race or Crit
5. Have Fun

There you have it, my goals are written down.  I always am told that you have to write your goals down to achieve them.  Next, I’ll concentrate on some ‘real world’ goals – which sometimes seem a lot harder to achieve than sporting goals.