Mid-season evaluation & goal setting
How many of you set goals?
I set goals for everything in life including my riding, my business and my personal life. I thrive off having something to work towards, although perhaps it would be better described as having a target to chase as I'm always going at 100mph. For me, goals work best when they are achievable, measurable and time-bound; this means that you haven't made them impossible, you've made it specific and you've set a time frame.
In this blog, naturally, we are going to focus on Eventing goals but before we can set achievable, measurable and time-bound goals for the second half of the season, we must first take time to analyse our performance so far. My original goal this season was to stick at BE100 (NOT move back up to Novice again) and make it through the season with Woody staying sound, running at one event a month. However, now we are three events in (four if you include the PC ODE) and he is sound and feeling mega, it's time to re-evaluate.
Equiratings came up with a fantastic formula to calculate how your season is going so far by measuring your power score and your reliability rate. Your power score is an average of your three best finishing scores, so, for example, I would add 35.5, 39.3 and 37.5 to equal 112.3 then divide it by three to get my average = 37.4. Now, I instantly recognise that this is much higher than in previous years; 2017 was 31.9 and 2016 was 32.0 (Woody didn't compete in 2018).
Moving on from that, we've had three out of three clear XC rounds, therefore, our reliability rate for XC is 100%. Immediately, I know my goal needs to include lowering my dressage score as we know XC isn't upping the score and we've only had one pole down this season so far.
So my new goals are:
1. To maintain my reliability rate of 100%
2. To get my dressage back down to a 32 or lower
both for the remaining three runs of the season
I'm going to stick to my original goal to NOT move up to Novice again, even though Woods is jumping better than ever, but with my reliability rate in mind, I have now scheduled a 105 run in September - a meet in the middle solution. To achieve my dressage goal I know I need to spend more time riding actual tests and getting him consistent and flowing into each movement as this is often mentioned in the judge's comments. Therefore, I am going to ride through a different test once a week to improve our rhythm in the white boards again.
So there you have it: that's how to set your goal. The key points to remember are:
1. Make it achievable: if I said I wanted to keep my dressage score under 25 I would immediately set myself up to fail. Under 32 is realistic but we will have to work for it.
2. Make it measurable: I can measure my dressage score and my reliability rate on the XC course.
3. Set a time frame: I've set a weekly task and my goals are relevant for the next three runs of the season then I will set new goals for the Autumn, Winter, Spring, etc.
Happy goal setting everyone!
Sarah x
XC photo by Dave Cameron Photography
