New Year’s resolutions for 2013

I’m one of those guys who like to make new year’s resolutions. Sometimes I stick to them (2007,2009 & 2010) but a lot of times I fail big time (2011 & 2012). You can read all about my 2013 new year’s resolutions in this blog.

I remember last year at the PCA I told everybody I would lose weight, I went from 105kg to 98k but today I’m back at 105kg. I remember making a bet with a friend about the amount of VPPs I would grind out this year, I didn’t even come close. I wanted to crush my personal record on Alp d’Huez but only beat it by 1 minute. Last week I already wrote about my 6 months no alcohol propbet which I think is a great start to achieve all the other goals I have for 2013. I noticed that a lot of people who responded on this didn’t read my blog at all but just responded on the title. I’m not doing it because I’m alcoholic or I think drinking has a negative impact on me as a person. i.e. I don’t get into fights and I don’t drink to try and forget normal life. Most people who do top-class sport don’t drink because it has a negative impact on your overall performance. Now I don’t want to compare myself with somebody who does top-class sport but I do want to push myself to the max for 6 months and by quitting alcohol I will improve my performance in all the goals I want to achieve.

To make sure I wouldn’t change my mind before the end of the year I was willing to put a max of $2k on quitting alcohol for 6 months. Most people on the forums said this was to easy, most of my friends laughed at me in my face and said I would never be able to pull it off. So far I only have 1 person who was willing to bet with me for $250, I’m really happy with this and not because I think it will be easy. After agreeing to the bet I started thinking about what I had already planned to do during these 6 months. At the end of January I’m going away with 36 people for a weekend of fun in a huge/farm house, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In April I’m going away for a weekend to the Amstel Gold Race with 11 guys, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In May I’m going to Greece with my girlfriend for 10/12 days, normally this involves at least some wine during dinner. I was planning to go to Las Vegas as well in June, I doubt this is still an option if I’m not drinking any alcohol. These are just holidays, I probably have somebody’s birthday every other week and let’s just hope nobody is getting married. Yes I can do all these things without drinking but it will be very hard. If I didn’t put any money on it I’m sure I would have allowed myself to drink on all these “special” occasions, which often leads to giving up on it somewhere down the line. I really hope I will be able to finish the bet, $250 might not be enough money to keep my away from drinking alcohol but my own will to accomplish the goals I have for 2013 should!

I’ve been thinking a lot of what I want to do within these 6 months and I think it’s a good idea to list some big goals and some smaller goals. In case for whatever reason I’m not able to make any of the big goals I should still be happy with making some of the smaller goals I’ll set for myself. I want to divide my goals into 3 categories: Poker, Lifestyle, Cycling. I want to finalise the list early next year since I’m going to start with this when I return from the Bahamas but this is what I’ve been thinking off so far.

Poker
I agree with most other people that setting a monetary goal is not a good idea. You can’t really predict how much money you are going to make since this heavily depends on the games that are running and how lucky you are in terms of variance. I’ve always put my goals in terms of VPPs which made sense because it said something about how much I grinded. This year however I’m going to do it slightly different, I’m putting my goals in # of hours. This is because I want to play less tables and putting a goal in terms of VPPs will often result in playing to many tables. Therefore I set a goal of playing 500 hours of poker in 6 months which means roughly 20hours a week. This is next to my part-time job of 24hours of course. This is going to be pretty hard since I will miss some week(s)ends due to holidays but I’ll just have to deal with that by grinding a bit more the other weeks. I will actually start counting the hours from January 1st and I have until Friday the 12th of July to make it is a little bit more than 6 months but since I’m away to the Bahamas as well this means only 4 days extra and I doubt I’ll be grinding on the 1st of January. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing cashgames or tourneys, live or online as long as I’m playing poker. I can’t really think about any other poker goals for 2013 but I think this will be a pretty good challenge already!

Lifestyle
The obvious one in this category is 6 months without alcohol starting the 13th of January until the 12th of July(so I can have a beer again in France on the 13th). The other one is of course losing some weight again, let’s start with < 100kg then < 95kg and my ultimate goals is 93kg. I’m 105kg at the moment, with Christmas still to come and a week in the Bahamas so there is probably about 10-15kg to lose. Losing weight is actually not the goal, losing fat is but I doubt I’ll gain a lot of muscle by only cycling. 93kg is doable but I would already be extremely happy with < 95kg, I need to drop weight to climb those mountains faster!

Cycling
I can think off a lot of cycling goals. I want some goals which I can achieve while training and some ultimate goals. The first goal is to get my segment record back on my own strava segment. When doing the sports bet back in September I lost it to Diede and my first goal is to get it back which means I have to cycle 13,4km in 24:30 (32,8km/h). It might not sound fast but it goes up and down a lot so it’s not that simple. My own PR is 26:12 so I do have to improve more than 1:30 minute. Another training goals is a ride I often do to Scheveningen. It’s 72,5km and I would like to ride it solo in 2hours and 40 minutes which means an average of 27,2km/h. I never really ride it solo but the last time I did it it took me 3hours and 7 minutes and with a friend of mine I did it in 02 hours 56 which means I have to gain a lot of speed. The big goal this year is to finish the 150km Amstel Gold Race in April and on the 13th of July after not drinking for 6 months it’s time for another try at Alp d’Huez and this time I do want to crush my personal record! Currently it’s 1 hours and 47 minutes and I want to do it in 1,5 hours, a huge difference but I feel I can do this. It’s probably the most challenging goal I will set myself this year. The last one is to ride up the Galibier for the 1st time, this is going to be the masterpiece of my trip to France!

So these are all the goals I have. I’ll keep track of my weight and poker hours in a spreadsheet and Strava.com will keep track of my cycling goals. If you have any ideas about other goals I could add just let me know. I can think about them for another month or so. I’m also still willing to take on some more “6 months no alcohol” bets.

If I don’t blog before the end of the year, merry x-mass and a happy new year!