Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The importance of goal setting.

Recently I was reminded about the importance of goal setting. Having a goal, and striving to reach it, can keep a person focused. The one thing that was stressed above all else when it comes to goal setting was that the goal doesn't to be huge. In fact, I've learned it's best to set "little" goals at first, to help build up confidence. Also, in the event you do fail to accomplish some of your goals for a given day, don't dwell of them. Instead, focus on the goals you did complete.

Goals are important in the life of a Christian. Everyday we should set a goal of being as Christ-like as possible. No, I'm not saying to strive for perfection, because we will always fall short of that goal. Instead, we need to keep the Scriptures in mind, weighing our thoughts and actions against what God has written in His book. I know it quite cliche', but we need to keep the old "WWJD" saying in mind.

Goals are also important when you're a cyclist. If we don't set goals, we will never know if we're improving or not. Both short term and long term goals are important. Long terms goals help you see how you've progressed over a longer length of time, usually anywhere from 3 to 6 months. Short term goals help you focus a lot of concentration and energy into a short period of time to rapidly improve.

Having said that, I have set a long term goal for myself. The past few years, I have "trained" for the Bike The Drive ride held on Lake Shore Drive the Sunday before Memorial Day. It's a 15 to 30 mile ride on Chicago's famous Lake Shore Drive. The drive is shut down to cars for five hours and open only to bicyclists. It's quite a sight to see over 20,000 cyclists enjoying a car free Lake Shore Drive.

However, that's not my goal this year. Going to shake things up some and shoot for the "Le Tour de Shore" charity ride, held this year on June 13 and 14, 2014. This is a two day, 100 mile ride from Chicago's Millennium Park to Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton Indiana (66 miles) on day one and then from the Indiana Dunes to City Park in New Buffalo, Michigan (34 miles) on day two. I've never attempted this kind of mileage before, so it will quite a challenge. The furthest I've ever ridden was about 32 miles when I did Bike The Drive for the first time way back in 2004. This past summer, the longest I rode was a little over 20 miles on a couple different occasions. However, I have about 30 weeks to train for the ride, so that gives me plenty of time to slowly build up my mileage base. I will give periodic updates as my training progresses.

If you'd like to get an idea of what the Tour de Shore ride looks like, here's part one of a video one of the riders made this past June......


Thanks for stopping by and reading today's blog entry. I'm going to try really hard to make more regular entries. God Bless!!!

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