ideas and suggestions for new challenges

My thoughts on what would help me be a better triathlete:

At some point during the gear challenge I fell in love with riding the bike, no inspiration needed.

I can't run due to injuries.

That leaves swimming. I can swim far and I can swim pretty fast, but I need to swim far, fast.

How about this.  Set a distance and time goal for yourself, take one month to get there, testing yourself initially and then once a week. If you wanted teams, we could take the percentage of team members reaching goal averaged with the percentage of improvement towards goal of those not making it. I didn't pay close attention to scoring in the gear challenge, but we could do something like that.

 For example, I'd like to swim 1000 yards in 15 minutes. If I get there, great, if my initial test is 17 minutes and I get to 16 at the end, then my 50% is averaged in.

 Or, we could do something similar with a bike time trial on a specific course.

I get three point then, my three kids are doing a Tri this weekend.  Or does that only work on Sprint lengths?  Kids are only 10, 9 and 5.

Challenge ideas (that I should be doing for myself already!):

• Follow how closely you stick with your planned workouts (% complete?)
• Challenge yourself to record your daily nutrition...on a daily basis!
• An early-morning challege to get out of bed - set a goal number of days per week and stick to it!!
• BREAK The Training Mold - The One New Thing Challege: a weekly challenge to try one new thing each week for a month.  Examples could include taking a new class, attempting a new skill (i.e. practice putting on and taking off cycling shoes while riding), or reading a new book and directly applying a technique.  I think you would gain ideas on things to try far beyond the month by reading other folks' experiences.

I agree. Now, take a look at my suggestion. Do we all just want to train more, or do we want to get faster? I want to get faster.

And, if we are going to do teams, let's all admit in advance that if some of our members don't perform it's partly because we didn't motivate them. If you play as a team, you win and lose as a team. Then we can all play nice when it's over.

Well, whether the personal goal was get faster, get fitter, or just get off the couch (That's me!!), the gg vs tbi was a great challenge; it could be taylored to the speedy hard bodies on down to old ladies on trikes.  June looks waaaay better in my log than July - that trike got used!!

Coming from Snowmass, I do have a lot of vertical opportunities.  Unfortunately my knees don't like the downhills too much on foot and I'm often away from home.

Setting goals is something I've gotten better at over the years.  Sometimes I've set impossible goals.  Challenge participants who didn't make their goals might have set a way too high goal.  If you have a bunch of young kids or are working and going to school at the same time then 10 minutes a day might be pushing it but I believe 5 minutes a day is better than nothing. 

Thanks for all the ideas folks!!