2008 Cycling Review

As the cycling season is winding down, I'm starting to reflect a bit on this year and what I want to do for next year. I didn't accomplish all of my goals for the year, but I also knew when I set them up that they'd be pretty ambitious, especially given the arrival of my daughter.

My goals for 2008 were:

1. Race well enough that I felt comfortable moving up to the Expert category in MTB racing for next year.
2. Finish top 5 in the USAC MTB series (Sport category).
3. Finish top 10 in the B category of the cyclocross series.

Despite some good finishes in some mountain bike races this year, I didn't meet any of these goals.

There were a couple of general trends that caused me to miss some of these goals. One was that I wasn't sufficiently motivated to do some of the MTB races. In fact, had I just entered all of the MTB races I planned to, I would have finished 5th in the USAC series. The second trend was that I felt like I was out of "racing shape" for a number of the races I did this year: 3 of the 5 MTB races and 3 of the 7 'cross races I'll likely do. That's not such a good ratio.

In terms of 2008 training objectives, I had two. The first was to improve my strength; I planned to do this by working hard on my off-bike lifting and by making sure I completed all of my scheduled Force workouts. I actually did pretty well with this, particularly in the spring before my daughter was born. I definitely felt stronger on the bike this year and I think it resulted in an improvement in my racing.

My second training objective was to improve my technical riding skills to the point where I would no longer consider them a weakness. I improved a lot here too, but I still consider technical skills a weakness (at least, for MTB). An important thing I did over the winter was to spend time in the garage just working on basic balance stuff; I think this helped a lot. I also practiced some basic cornering on a dirt road / parking lot, which was also helpful. One of the things I didn't do much was mountain bike group rides. I always put this on my list of things to do (and I'm sure I will next year too), but I just don't do very many.

My goals for next year probably won't be too different; expectations will be higher though. What I probably will change is how I go about trying to achieve them. I'm pretty sure I will be changing my training plan for next year. My idea is that by going to a higher-intensity plan, I will be in race shape for more races. It should also help me use my training time more effectively.