goal orienting

new week, new shoes (thanks LRC!), new results, namely: 9:54. i got what i asked for. and thank goodness for that. since a certain, previously named, training partner of mine let my blog out of the bag to most of our local running community. one facebook post and a few hours later my warm up was peppered with a plethora of well wishers, and thus an unexpected added pressure for my humble sub 10 goal for the week. luckily, all's well that ends well.

assisting my efforts on wednesday were: a nice and needed reduction in weekly mileage (back down to the 40's) and the kind cooperation of our infamous local weather system which gifted us a slightly less sweltering eve than the week before.

afterward, this small exercise in goal setting got me thinking about that process in general and how important and integral a role it plays in achieving success in running (and elsewhere). goal setting is tricky business. aim too high and you may find yourself feeling perpetually unsatisfied with your results. aim too low and you may never achieve your potential. as such, i have come to believe, through lots of trial, error, and an occasional stumble across success, that effective goal setting needs a few major components. first is the willingness to take a risk. next is to balance that risk taking with the ability to maintain optimism and derive satisfaction from the effort even when the results don't cooperate with your plans. last, and perhaps most importantly, is the ability to be flexible since, as mr john lennon put it so eloquently, "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

certainly in my life, where running is concerned, i have never been in short supply of tall aspirations. the earliest memory i can conjure from my freshman high school season was watching the varsity boys squad do repeats on the track and thinking to myself "i can beat those guys". little did i know at the time that those guys included a cross-country state runner-up who went on to run 9:09/4:12 in his senior season, a freshman with a mile PR in the 4:30's, and the squad as a whole was coming off a runner-up team effort at the California state meet. those guys were the real deal. but as i watched in awe while that elite flock made my fastest gears look effortless something inside me just saw a mountain to climb. looking back, i believe it was in this moment that my penchant for large goals was born. very little of that moment was conscious and i was still a few seasons away from truly understanding the science of goal setting my high school coach would prescribe and impart on us. but there it was, visceral and honest. and i believe that moment set the tone for my entire running career to this day.

as it turns out goal setting is not always best suited to this highly emotional and mostly illogical process i was giving in to. in many cases that can actually be very counter productive to ones ultimate success, as repeated perceived failures become internalized and a more negative self dialogue can ensue. there is a fine line to be walked between dreaming big and staying realistic. as you can probably deduce, i have leaned heavily towards the former in my career. in many ways that was a major contributor to the greatest successes i've enjoyed in the sport. even as many others looked at my goals and thought they were somewhere between misguided and out of touch with reality. i think the best example of this was the goal setting of my senior year in high school. at the close of my junior year i had run consistently in the top 2 or 3 for my cross country team, and on the track, had whittled my 3200m and 1600m times down to 9:28 and 4:24 respectively. yet somehow from this data set i extrapolated the following goals:

i qualify for nationals in cross-country.
i am state champion in cross-country.
i am state champion in the 3200m.
i break 9:00 in the 3200m.


in the end i accomplished only the first thing on this list but i came very close to the others. the lesson i took away from this season was that lofty goals made me work harder and through hard work i could at least come close to accomplishing most anything i put my mind to. sounds great, right? well, not quite so fast. there is a good deal of truth to that logic but as i turned the page to the collegiate chapter i came to find out that truth isn't absolute.

my first year in the college ranks was a rude awakening. suddenly, instead of competing to win championship races i was struggling to place in the top 100 at mid season invitationals. eventually i adjusted and over the course of 5 years (including a redshirt season) and became fairly competitive again. but the results, as compared with my goals, never quite matched up as well as i had come to expect from my high school experience. there are an infinite number of variables that could have contributed to those results but i think a significant factor was the following cycle: i set goals, i trained hard, i failed to exceed those expectations, i felt like a failure, i set bigger goals, trained harder, and began the cycle anew. eventually i would break my goals from previous seasons but by that time i had already come up with a new set of circumstances to judge myself by.

essentially what i think this all boiled down to was a patience problem. i had high expectations for myself based on my marks going into college. and rather than taking a step back to adjust to the new surroundings and looking for reasons to be excited about my progress, i continued to double down, confounding the problem. in other words, i neglected two thirds of the goal setting process. i was willing to take the risk but failed to maintain optimism/derive satisfaction from the effort because i was not flexible.

anyhow, now that i have made a short story long, my point is this: goals are important but just as important is your relationship to them. as such i am doing my best these days to not put them on a pedestal. they are there to give me purpose and direction, not to be a shadow to be lived under. so, as i hurl myself towards this new, very small target, i will keep in mind that qualifying for the trials would be amazing and a dream come true but not any more amazing than the willingness to take the risk to try and all the wonderful things that will come along the way.


goals for the week:

sub 4:40 mile at the track meet on friday.