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Setting goals is a great way to stay motivated to enjoy all the benefits of riding your bike.
January is the perfect time to think ahead and set yourself some #RideResolutions.
Not only will you be more motivated to ride your bike, but you’re also likely to ride it MORE OFTEN and FURTHER.
You can set goals, monitor your progress and share your success using your Love to Ride profile.
Be a goal-getter. Follow these 4 simple steps and you’ll be on your way to success!
1. Get personal
2. Make it measurable, specific and time-bound
3. Set mini-goals to achieve something bigger
4. Share it to Stories
Get personal
Setting a good goal is personal. You want to make your goal relevant to you.
Don’t scroll through social media and base your goals around what other people are doing. Just because someone else is going out on a bike ride every day, doesn’t mean it’s practical or even achievable for you to do that.
This should be YOUR goal. Something that you personally are excited about and realistically able to achieve whilst still stretching yourself.
Make it Measurable, Specific and Time-Bound
If your goal is all of the above, then you can easily track your progress and celebrate when you have completed it!
Saying you would like to ride your bike more often gives you something you want to measure – the frequency that you ride.
Being specific is really important so you can track your progress. You might want to ride more often so if you create a goal to ride every day for a week that makes the goal specific.
Similarly, you might want to ride for fitness and decide to make it a calorie related goal, that would be what you would like to measure. Adding a goal to ride off 100 slices of cake in 3 months would be more specific and allow you to see how you are progressing and when you have achieved it.
Making your goal time-bound will give you a deadline to focus on and give you a sense of urgency. We all remember what it was like to go to school, go to your classes and no matter how prepared you were…do a bit of cramming before the deadline of the exam, right?
If you have a deadline you can plan to achieve it, but also give that little extra push when the deadline is getting close!
Set mini-goals to help you achieve something bigger!
Want to set a big goal for the quarter or even year? If you are setting a larger goal, add some mini-goals to help you on the way. These shorter-term goals will help you say on track and boost your confidence along the way.
Say you want to ride 100 miles by March 31, and you set the goal on January 1. You could make a smaller goal, like riding 30 miles in January. This will show you how far you have come, keep you on track with the longer-term goal and give you a chance to celebrate a milestone on your way.
Having to wait too long to pat yourself on the back can lead to demotivation and put you off course. With longer-term goals, it is important to reward yourself mentally on the way. Mini goals are a great way to do that.
Last but not least, share your goal
This might seem a bit scary at first but sharing a goal makes you more likely to achieve it. There’s a lot of research to support the idea of having a training partner and accountability buddies. Sharing your goal could take many forms, from telling a partner or co-worker, actually doing it with another rider or posting it on social media.
“This is one, of many, of the best features of the ‘Love to Ride’ website. At the beginning of 2019, I set myself a ‘Goal’ to complete 150 rides over the following 52-weeks and I plan to do the same this coming new year.” Ross-Barry F (Love to Ride user)
