Raising the bar

When I entered my 1st Ironman I set a target time of 17 hours.  After all I was only interested in completing it.  The Copenhagen Ironman was fast due to it being flat so this time limit was reduced to 16 hours by the organisers - I can do that I thought.  Once I got into my training I started increasing my expectation and finally set a target of 13.5 hours and eventually did it in 12 hours 45 mins finishing with a 4 hr marathon.
I share this with you because it's amazing how you expectations can change.  Well today I was with my coach Gen and she informed me that she expects me to complete my bike section in Lanzarote 1 hour quicker than in Copenhagen.  Slight difference in temperature, profile (Lanza had 9,400 ft of climb and assent) and wind - but she is deadly serious.  She also explained that she is training me for a 3 hr 40 min marathon but allowing a 20 minute buffer to beat my last one.
This "raises the bar" considerably especially with Lanza being so tough.  But it does focus me on every training session so when I was struggling tonight on the turbo session I just thought about Gen's bike target for me and applied rule 5 - Man Up (the polite version!).