The rules for achieving success.

It doesn’t matter what you aim to achieve, there are some simple rules that you must follow. For the purpose of this article, I will use weight-loss and cycling as examples.

1. Choose your goal, plan it and document it. I want to lose 10 kilos, or I want to ride 50 kilometers regularly on a bicycle at an average speed of 21 kilometers/hour.
2. Choose the tools that you need to achieve that goal. To lose weight, I must have an eating plan and preferably select an activity type for exercising. For achieving my cycling goal, I will need a bicycle and perhaps a good cycling computer with a GPS and preferably a heart-rate monitor.
3. Document and manage your progress towards achieving that goal. For weight-loss it could be as simple as a hand-drawn chart on the wall and a good electronic scale, but there are some excellent applications around that will assist you greatly in working towards that goal. For cycling and any other sport that takes place in the outdoors, there is nothing better than Strava.
4. Celebrate achieving the goal. This is the easy part. You will instinctively know how to do this, but it is always good to move on to new goals.

In this blog I want to focus on point three and more specifically on Strava.

Why I use Strava.

I have been writing a lot about using tools to measure your goals. One of the best tools around is Strava, a multi-sport application, that records all your activities on a map using a GPS. It is used by professional and recreational athletes and can be used as an application on your smartphone or with any number of other devices like smart watches, sports watches, bike computers etcetera. The standard version is free and can provide you with all the information required to measure your improvement. For the sake of this discussion, I will not cover the premium version which comes at a monthly subscription cost.

As people started contacting me about starting a weight-loss journey, I advised them on recording their activities as a means to measure improvement in fitness and performance. In doing this you see the improvement and it motivates you to improve and more importantly to continue and not give up.

I’ve been keeping my eye on a couple of people who started to use Strava as a means to measure their improvement on a fitness level.  I advised one of the guys who started cycling, to create segments on every area where he rides up hills. I told him going fast down hills is not a measure of your skill, fitness or power. In fact all you prove is that Newton was correct. The heavier you are, the faster you go down a hill. This realisation has really fired him up and he is now chasing personal records also known as PR’s on these uphill segments.

The main thing here is not the records, but the fact that every PR is an improvement on your own best previous attempt at the same challenge. I’ve been at it for 10 months since I started my weight loss and fitness journey and I still regularly improve my times in these segments. But on top of this I am also increasing my average speed on rides and I am increasing my distances. Just this morning I achieved another personal goal when I exceeded 100 kilos in a day for the first time.

None of these were on my agenda when I started. I only wanted to lose weight in the hope that I would be able to cope better with the pain in my knees. On this journey I have however discovered new opportunities to excel as my fitness and power increased. With my weight coming down at the same time my power to weight ratio increased tremendously. Today I can climb on that bicycle and it feels as if I can continue to ride it forever if my bum survives.

Last year I rode 3600 kilos and this year I am aiming for 10 000 kilos if all works out well. Measuring my activities has pushed me to do more and also to have a record of my achievements.

Strava is my preferred application (tool) that I use to record my progress and the fact that you can use it as a private tool or a public tool means that you can either use it for yourself only or like in my case, I can monitor and motivate people who choose to allow me to do so.

Using other devices with Strava

While Strava works fine on a smart phone, I opted to use other devices to record my activities and then auto-upload the activity after completion to Strava. There are a number of reasons why you might want to consider doing it.

• You can record even if you don’t have your phone with you.
• You can add heart rate monitors, power and cadence meters.
• In the case of the Lezyne Y10 Enhanced Super GPS, you can activate live tracking and by sending a link to someone close to you, they can track you on a map in real time and if anything happens to you they know it and can find you quickly. (For this you need to have the device paired with your smart phone. If your device is paired with your smart phone, it still uses less battery than when you run on the Strava  application on your phone.
• These devices are usually more robust and waterproof than your smart phone, making it the ideal device to take with you on your activity and you can even swim with it.
• Many of these devices can now tell you who is calling you and even show messages on your screen. This is very handy when you have people alone at home that may need your help in an emergency.

The reason I decided to use my first external device with Strava was that I wanted a heart-rate monitor and at the time I didn’t want it to be a chest strap, so the Tomtom Spark 3 with cardio was my choice. The Tomtom served me well but as a cyclist I soon realised that it had one drawback. It was not visible enough while I was riding and I ended up using it mostly just for making sure I kept my heart-rate within limits. Other than that it worked really well and it mapped my trip with an overlay showing my heart-rate.

Some humour.

Recently I went on a morning ride with a couple of good buddies. One of these friends of mine is perhaps the most tenacious guy I know but he also battles with his off-road skills and every now and then he takes a tumble.

One morning we came down a steep decline known in the cycling community as “Bobbejaanbult” or Baboon hill. True to his reputation my dear friend hit a rock with his front wheel and made a half summersault landing in the bushes with his bicycle lying on top of him. While gathering himself and feeling if all his limbs are still intact a voice from somewhere in the bushes said “pausing”. It was his Strava app picking up that he stopped moving.

It was only later that he told us the story laughing at himself.

As always let me know if I can assist with anything by leaving a comment below. Have a lovely day.