>Winning

>It’s the time of year when I have to sit down and devise my targets for the new season (which, incidentally, starts next Saturday – what happened to the off-season?). I’ve been thinking of time targets for time trials – should it be 30 seconds faster? A minute slower? Or what?

But what I really want to do is win. Win a race.

Now targets have to be realistic and last season my average position was in the bottom half of the field. I never got within a sniff of a placing, and I’m not likely to this season either. There was a time (ah, those were the days…) when I was sometimes a top ten rider, an occasional prize winner and (just the once) a winner. But I was a different person then. I didn’t train any harder or more effectively, but the legs were younger.

So this season’s targets will be dutifully SMART: with the ‘A’ standing for ‘achievable’. They will be carefully calculated and phrased to help me focus through the season. But in the back of my mind will be a less smart target. And a memory of a day nearly 30 years ago when I did win that one race.