Redefining Your Goals to Maximize the Joy
The Original Plan
2019 has been a very difficult year for me both personally and in the sport of running. Over the past few years I’ve had a vision of where I wanted my running to go and last year I lost site of that. Your decisions have consequences, and you should understand the pro’s and con’s of each when your planning your racing season.
I've always had a dream of becoming a faster more competitive trail runner. Not for any other reason than the fact that I find it a lot of fun to be in the mix of the lead pack in a race. To be up there knowing that if I have my day I may end up winning but also knowing full well that I could blow up if things don’t go my way. That is the kind of racing that gets me excited. I am not taking the super short stuff like 5-10k’s, but more the marathon - 50 mile distance. These seem to be the distances that I am drawn to. Long enough that you need to have some good endurance but short enough that I can flirt with the red line.
2018 saw some good progress in this direction. I snagged a few podiums and had some epic blow ups but it was the most fun running season I’ve had ever. I had planned to continue into 2019 building on this success. But then I heard that my friend was hosting the first 100 mile race in Atlantic Canada. I very quickly made an emotional decision and signed up for the 100 miles. No regrets here - sometimes you just decide that you want to do things or you have that 100 mile itch that just needs scratching.
The result of this decision was that I had a ton of fun and finished my first 100 mile race. However I essentially remained stagnant with my main goals and perhaps even a step or two backwards due some more emotional race planing.
Avoid External Pressures
For some reason when the teams come calling looking for people to run The Cabot Trail Relay it is really hard for me to say no. I try to tell myself that I’ll just run it easy or that this year will be different, but the end result is the same. I have a little bit of fun and then sacrifice the the beginning of trail season. This race has nothing to do with my goals or plans for the year but I do it anyway. I intuitively know that my body does not agree with racing the Cabot Trail Relay a few weeks after a hard road marathon. I don’t know how many times I need to prove this to myself by doing it and ending up injured. Was it fun? Yes. Was it worth the cost? No.
In 2017 I ran the cabot trail marathon right off of the Fredericton Marathon. I ended up running a double leg (finished well into the top in both legs) and it cost me a month and a half of being injured in prime trail running season. 2018 I stuck to my guns after the spring marathon and didn’t run Cabot, this resulted in my strongest most consistent trail running season to date (2 podium finishes!). 2019 I gave into pressure again and ran cabot, again with a top 10 finish that led to my most epic implosion yet. I ended up injured for over 3.5 months barely making it to the start line of my “A” race at capes 100 and without the training that I had my heart set on doing.
There you have it two real example of where I had a plan and a vision of how I wanted my year to go and because I gave into external pressures and did a race that other people wanted me to do not giving my body the recovery it needed I ended up sacrificing my most important goals.
Set Deeper More Meaningful Goals for Yourself
To align myself in the right direction I find it is very helpful to have a good understanding of my goals for the year to come (or years).
There are two main types of goals. Process goals and Outcome goals. If you are an outcome goal driving athlete you are going to have a very tough time in the sport of running and in life in general.
Outcome goals are goals such as 'I want to run a Sub 3 hr marathon' or 'qualify for Boston'. These goals indicate that you will not be happy until such a time when you complete these goals. With the nature of distance running it is possible that you can do everything right but on race day the stars don’t align and you do not make your goal. If you are outcome driven, at this point you may give up entirely because you are so upset. Or you may take an extended break from training leading you to lose fitness. Or another quick example if your outcome goal is that you want to complete your first 1/2 marathon, you complete your goal and then you stop running and settle back into your old habits because your are done.
Process goals are much deeper. Process goals are what you need to do in order to succeed. If you nail the process goals the outcome will take care of itself. Some example of process goals are:
I will refine my diet to improve my perfomace
I will incorporate strength and mobility work 3 x per week because I know shear muscle failure was the limiting factor in the last 3 of my A races.
I will maximize my sleep and get at least 7 hrs a day because I know this leads to better performance.
I will capitalize on my rest days and use this time to roll my tired and sore muscles to make sure my muscle fibres stay healthy to reduce my chances of injury.
I will make sure I take care of my self before/during and after workouts with proper nutrition and hydration. When I have neglected this in the past it has led to dizzy spells and lost training time.
Finally we need to have a deep understanding of our WHY and define our values. You need to go deep inside yourself and answer this question. If you want to run a 50 mile race you better have a better reason than “My friend said it would be fun, so I’ll do it too.”
What are some reasons why we want to train and take care of our bodies?
I want to feel good everyday, I don’t want to feel fatigued, sore or tired. I want to be healthy and live a quality long life that has me active until the end of my days.
I want to be content, knowing that each day I am trying to better my self.
With in reason I’d like to be capable of jumping into just about any adventure I can think.
I am competitive by nature and I am driven to continuous improvement and challenging myself by racing others. Not comparing myself against others but using competition to get the most out of myself.
When I talk about setting goals I am not talking I want to PR in my next half marathon kind of goals. Those goals are fine and all, but they often fail to stand up over time when your motivation may be waining.
The type of goals I am referring to here are much deeper. For example, I want to be a more competitive runner, hone my racing skills and have fun doing it. Now when I am making decisions for the year I have a litmus test to use to help determine whether or not I should do something.
Redefining the Goal
With so many races out there both locally and abroad its important to remember that you can’t do them all. I am a fan of racing to hone your skills and you certainly do learn how to race better by racing more. However, every race you enter can’t be your “A” race.
To structure your season properly you should have one or two main goal races or A races to focus on. If you have more than that it is very easy to lose focus.
You can fill your calendar with other races that help you prepare for these events, but you can’t be in peak shape and race your hardest at every single one of them. I pick my “A” goals based on what is going to excite me the most to train hard for that year, not what my friends are doing or what they think I should race. Because at the end of the day I need to know the WHY behind all the training. If it is for someone else's' idea of an “A” race and I’m not completely on board with that it makes putting in the training so much more difficult.
Why bother putting in the work to redefine your goals?
For a few weeks I was really struggling getting out of the door to go running for a number of reasons. What all of them are is not really important, but what it boiled down to was that I had picked what I thought was going to be my “A” goal for next year. I thought I was excited about it. I was going to go back and attempt to run the entire Cabot Trail. That seems like a worthy goal. It ticks all the boxes for me.
EXCEPT when I really thought about it I just was not all that excited to put the work in that was required to make this goal happen. Once I realized this I had a moment where I felt some external pressure that I had to go back and try again next year. I quickly realized that the reason of 'I felt I had to' was not going to get me through the training for a 300k run. Then when I dug in to this goal some more it really didn’t fit with my core motivation with how I wanted my running to progress.
I started re-thinking my season and picking goal races that would really help me progress and I felt the excitement building. It was like a switch had been flipped in my head and I was excited to get out the door and back to training again.
Finding the Joy
The moral of the story is that if you are going to invest so much of your time training it is worth the time to sit down with yourself and make sure that what you are training for truly excites you. Make sure that you don’t just like the idea of running this race or that race. Or that you have signed up for a race because your friends thought it was a cool idea. Have the conversation with yourself and decide what it is that you want to do. Once you do I know you’ll find more joy in the day to day training and more joy in accomplishing you goals.
