Goal Setting: Setting your sights on personal bests
Quick, what would Napoleon, Neil Armstrong and participant in a competitive eating contest have in common? Didn’t their focused determination towards a single task allow them to be successful in what they set out to do? They had ambition, intent and meaning to what they were doing. They had GOALS that facilitated the success they were after.
Goals offer you a roadmap in the months of training you will endeavor in hour after hour, before your goal event. Goals will enable you to achieve your highest level of performance on race day by ensuring that your training was focused and appropriate for your goals and because your mind has honed in on exactly what you want to achieve in your goal race, and how you will need to act out your performance to achieve this goal.
Goal setting has a process like the any of the training you regularly do. To create goals that function to guide you towards your athletic dreams follow these guidelines in designing your statements of intent.
Set S.M.A.R.T. goals, they have the following qualities:
Specific – Identify a specific action or event that will take place.
Measurable – The goal and its outcome should be measurable.
Achievable – The goal should be attainable given the time you have and your current fitness and experience.
Realistic – A well founded goal is on that will require you to improve from where you are beginning, but also allow a strong likelihood of success.
Timely – The goal should include the date or time period of which it will be achieved.
Goal setting is a dynamic process. It is appropriate to set several goals at a session. Come up with 5 items that you would like to work on that relate to you main goal. Make sure to state your goals as a declaration of your intent and not a wimpy wish for an ideal outcome. “I will run 2:43:30 at the Chicago marathon in October of 2008” is a strong statement of intent.
Develop short term and long term goals. When goal setting with my athletes, I have them set goals that will take them through the next 12 weeks as their short term goals. Simultaneously we work on setting goals for the next 9-12 months for intermediate goals and then over the next 24 months to establish our long term goals. The three tier goal setting encourages the athlete to prioritize the events they would like to participate in and determine what their goal is for that event over the short and intermediate time periods (1-12 months). Most importantly the long term goal setting sets a course for us to follow in developing their strengths into even greater assets, improving on weaknesses to improve performance and encouraging continued education in their sport to develop the 1% difference between achieving good and great results. These long term goals tend to be more qualitative and may include a wider variety of subjects like education in nutrition, stories of the lifestyle and training of great runners in the past, or a life goal tangentially related to their activity like learning a language they can use when traveling for a race.
Goal setting is best done with your coach or someone close to you that will be supportive AND objective about your endeavors. Sharing your intentions with others supportive of your training and racing will cement the bond your share with them and promote your success in achieving these goals. Make sure to write down these goals and put them in a place you can look back on them. Many athletes will put their short term declarations in a place where they will see them on a daily basis, like their mirror in the bathroom. From time to time revisit your goals and be comfortable review and revising your list. They are not set in stone, and you are not a failure if you modify them. Like anything you will improve with practice the more you work with goal setting.
For a complimentary worksheet to use in your goal setting visit Complete Running Programs.
Long may you run,
Sean Coster
Complete Running Programs
