Winter Interlude – Planning for 2020

Your goals should excite you a lot and scare you a little

My day job is working as an advisor to business management around various important strategic IT themes. Over the years I have seen a pattern. People have a tendency to overly focus on the idea, the target of that they would like to achieve – but rarely end up successfully executing!

A model we use to reinforce rules for translating strategy into action is 4DX – The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Discipline 1 – The Discipline of Focus – Focus on the Wildly Important

Discipline 2 –The Discipline of Leverage – Act on Lead Measures

Discipline 3 – The Discipline of Engagement – Keep a Compelling Scorecard

Discipline 4 – The Discipline of Accountability – Create a Cadence of Accountability

For 2020 I have a few big goals and aside from this quest to qualify for ÖtillÖ with the Boy I also have a dream to qualify for the 70.3 World Champs in Taupo New Zealand at the end of the year.

To achieve a goal, you have never achieved before, you must start doing things that you have never done before…

So I thought to myself what would it look like if I applied 4DX to my training?

Discipline 1 – Focus on the Wildly Important

The Qualifying Race will be 70.3 Staffordshire 7^th June 2020 conveniently seven days before ÖtillÖ Scilly with my birthday mid-week. First, a sanity check, what was last years’ winning times in my new M50-54 age group?

1^st Place 2019; Swim 00:27:45, T1 00:03:52, Bike 02:26:52, T2 00:03:22, Run 01:35:16 for a total time of 04:37:08

2^nd Place 2019; Swim 00:32:25, T1 00:03:44, Bike 02:34:02, T2 00:02:52, Run 01:34:56 for a total time of Total 04:47:59

From these I deduced my own goals; swim sub-30 (1:34/100m pace), bike sub-2:30 (36:04 km/h), run sub-1:35 (4:30 mins per km). If I can get somewhere around there, I have a chance. Based on past performance it will be tough but not impossible.

The bridge between goals and accomplishment is discipline

Discipline 2 – Act on Lead Measures

Lag measures are “output” oriented, while a lag measure tells you if you’ve achieved the goal, a lead measure tells you if you are likely to achieve the goal.

Aha! So here was my Eureka Moment, I started by listing pacing targets/results but realized that these were just other LAG measures, in the end, I arrived at this provisional list of highly influenceable lead measures.

• Swimming > 10km / week
• Running 100% execution of weekly tempo run
• Cycling – 90% execution of scheduled trainer sessions
• Weekly Sleep Performance > 85%
• No dietary processed carbs until the last meal of the day
• 16:8 Intermittent fasting >2 days per week

For 2020 I will have a razor focus on the process and let the outcomes of that process look after themselves!

If you are committed there is always a way

Discipline 3 – Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

I also realized that in the past I have tracked performance but not been great at tracking the process/lead metrics. So far, I have come up with these:

• The volume of training week on week by discipline
• Weight tracking
• Number of 16:8 fasts
• Heart Rate Variance
• Resting Heart Rate
• Recovery / Sleep Performance
• Swim – CSS Test every 6 weeks. Race day target 1:32/100 (Current 1:36)
• Bike – FTP Test every 4 to 8 weeks (Functional Threshold Power). Target >3.7 w/kg (260w at 70kg)
• Run – A 70.3 21,1km expectation is between 85% and 95% vLT.  So on 90% vLT of 4:02 predicts 1:34:33. A vLT of 4:02 is roughly equivalent to a 10k race result of 00:39:10 or 5k 00:18:52.

Where focus goes energy flows

Discipline 4 – Create a Cadence of Accountability

Lastly have nowhere to hide! I will set up a fixed weekly WIG (Wildly Important Goal) Session with the Boy to:

1. Account – report on commitments
2. Review the Scoreboard – change if needed
3. Plan – Lessons Learnt, improvements for next week and confirm new commitments

Definiteness of purpose is the one quality that one must possess to win

Wish me luck! /T

#ironman703 #lovetaupo #otillo #doingmorewithless #trilife #forwardneverstops #fwdmotionsthlm #FMS