Breaking down the work into the component pieces

Finishing the Gold Coast Triathlon (Luke Harrop Memorial) yesterday gave me pause to reflect on how to improve in season 2017-18. Triathlon is a challenging sport with the 4 disciplines of swim, ride, run and transition (you can lose a minute or two in transition if you don’t do it well). Over the last 3 years of competing I’ve focused on general fitness, doing a bit of running, a bit of riding, rarely swimming and just generally hoping my times improve over time.

In 2018 the Age Group World Championships will be held on the Gold Coast and I’m keen to vie for selection in the Australian team. I don’t need a major improvement to make the team, some strategic race selection should do, but to be competitive in the field I really need to deconstruct the event, look at each part as it contributes to the whole and then rebuild it back into a single event by the end of 2017.

So, breaking it down I have the following parts and my performance on the GC:

1. The Swim – 12th / 62. I don’t train much for the swim (at all really) but could save 1 or 2 mins in this leg (16%). I want to focus on a 1 minute saving here, about 8s/100m.
2. Transition 1 – 12th / 62. Not much time to save (8s slower than position 1, 10%), but better fitness and I could push harder to get out a little quicker.
3. The Ride – 32nd / 62. A lot of time here as I’m 4 mins down on the leader. A bad end to the cycle yesterday probably cost me 30 seconds but that still leaves a 3m30 gap. I should be able to push for a 3 minute saving here and move into the top 10.
4. Transition 2 – 7th / 62. Regretting the lost time at the end of the bike I pushed hard. Only 7s behind the fastest but there’s always improvement!
5. The Run – 20th / 62. This has been my weak discipline for some time so 20th was a good improvement. About 4 mins behind the top runner so a good improvement needed – 2 mins should be achievable, 3 mins as a stretch goal.

Overall – 19th / 62. If the combined improvements can be achieved, this 7-8 minute improvement would propel me into the top 3.

It’s interesting how breaking the improvements down into pieces makes it seem achievable – a few minutes here and there – but if I’d sat back to look at taking 7-8 minutes out of a 71 minute race I’d think it was impossible.

The same applies both in the Oxfam Trailwalker challenge – for training, fundraising and the event itself – as well as the business environment. The enormity of a project, the competing priorities and vague stretch goals do not inspire performance. But breaking the activities into achievable steps, moderate improvements and actionable tasks makes it seem quite reasonable.

In my previous Personal Leadership Plan I set myself the action of improving my “holding to account” skills. Reflecting on my progress since 2014 I can see that I failed to set achievable tasks or break down this large, ambiguous goal. By deconstructing the area for development I could have much more easily achieved improvement, tracked my achievements and ben more disciplined in my approach. Fortunately, the opportunity to improve is as alive today as it was yesterday.