Sunday, May 28, 2006
Goals
As a runner it is important to have goals. Goals help you to measure your progress. Goals help you refine your training. Goals help motivate you to get out and to keep going when you really don't want to. However, it is important to make sure that the goals that you set for yourself are not unrealistic.
Earlier this summer I was talking about how if I started to hit my goals, I could qualify for the Boston Marathon. In order to do that I'd need to run a 3:10 marathon or 7:15/mile. Right now I can't even do that for a 10K. Over the summer I hope to train such that I can do it for a 10K, but I don't think that I'll be able to do it for a marathon this year. It isn't a goal that I can shoot for honestly.
When I organize my goals for the summer, I make three levels of goal. The first is the attainable goals. These are the ones that if I complete my training, I should be able to achieve. They should be slightly challenging but still attainable. The next level of goal is the one where I'd be really happy if I achieved it. These goals are a little bit out there and really require you to focus in order to achieve them. The final level of goals are the ecstatic level goals. These goals are currently beyond my capabilities and would require a very focussed effort and the right conditions to achieve. Beyond the ecstatic goals are the daydreams.
My marathon goals for this year are
1 - Complete the marathon without any significant stretches of walking. My last attempt started badly and I ended up walking a significant portion of the back half.
2 - Run a 4:00 marathon.
3 - Run a sub-4:00 marathon.
D - Qualify for Boston
As a beginning marathoner, your first level of goal should be to complete the marathon. Your second level goal should be completing the marathon the way you want to. Finally, your third level goal can be any sort of time goal. The reason that you would want to set it up this way is that it would be terrible to finish the marathon and feel bad because you were not able to beat an arbitrarily selected time. You just ran a marathon! Once you have a marathon under your belt, then we can start talking about time goals.
Earlier this summer I was talking about how if I started to hit my goals, I could qualify for the Boston Marathon. In order to do that I'd need to run a 3:10 marathon or 7:15/mile. Right now I can't even do that for a 10K. Over the summer I hope to train such that I can do it for a 10K, but I don't think that I'll be able to do it for a marathon this year. It isn't a goal that I can shoot for honestly.
When I organize my goals for the summer, I make three levels of goal. The first is the attainable goals. These are the ones that if I complete my training, I should be able to achieve. They should be slightly challenging but still attainable. The next level of goal is the one where I'd be really happy if I achieved it. These goals are a little bit out there and really require you to focus in order to achieve them. The final level of goals are the ecstatic level goals. These goals are currently beyond my capabilities and would require a very focussed effort and the right conditions to achieve. Beyond the ecstatic goals are the daydreams.
My marathon goals for this year are
1 - Complete the marathon without any significant stretches of walking. My last attempt started badly and I ended up walking a significant portion of the back half.
2 - Run a 4:00 marathon.
3 - Run a sub-4:00 marathon.
D - Qualify for Boston
As a beginning marathoner, your first level of goal should be to complete the marathon. Your second level goal should be completing the marathon the way you want to. Finally, your third level goal can be any sort of time goal. The reason that you would want to set it up this way is that it would be terrible to finish the marathon and feel bad because you were not able to beat an arbitrarily selected time. You just ran a marathon! Once you have a marathon under your belt, then we can start talking about time goals.
# posted by mypetrock : 8:33 AM
