Goals. I hate them. I hate making them. I hate trying to follow them. Here's what happens. I set a goal. I work at it for a day or so. It's too boring or I'm too tired or I'm not seeing immediate results so I give up.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a fellow runner at an after-run coffee meetup. One of the girls who runs on Saturdays lives in the other end of my hood. I'd love to run with her (just for accountability and because I'm a huge chicken and hate running in the dark or early morning by myself). I mentioned that I wanted to run with her, but that I needed to get faster because she's speedy. He's a sales trainer/consultant and started talking about setting goals. I mentioned that I hate goal-setting. He said that I need to figure out what I want to do and how I'm going to make it happen. Write it down. And tell people about it. He said that it's very important to write it down and talk about it, because when other people know what you're working on, they'll ask you about it and hold you accountable. He has a point. (Except the way he was talking was really exciting and inspiring and the paragraph that I just wrote was possibly the most.boring.thing.ever.written.) My assignment before he left was to write down some goals and he was going to check back with me in 3 weeks (the next time he'd be at the run).
So here are my goals (subject to change as I think about them more):
1) Run my Saturday morning 5k in 35:30 by the end of the year. I ran 36:01 yesterday, so I think it's doable. There are 8 weeks left in the year and it's taking 10 seconds off of each mile. I can do that.
2) Have 310 miles in by the end of the year. As of today, I'm at 271 miles for the year. I just need to run 4.875 miles per week for the next 8 weeks. That's not even 5 miles per week. Doable.
3) Drink 64 oz of water each day. I've really been slacking in the water department and I feel it.
4) Long term goal is to run an entire half marathon in 2013. No walkies.
5) Long long term goal is to pace Runner Buddy Bob in his 100 Miler. I believe my lap would be around 16 miles. I don't have to run it, but I need the endurance to keep him on his feet.
So there you have it. Some goals. Now what?
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3 comments:
My preferred approach is to sneak up on a goal by stealth, one decision at a time. For example, I wanted to run 50 parkruns (free t-shirt) but that was a scary big commitment. So instead of planning 50 weeks worth of running, I just asked myself each week whether I would rather skip the parkrun or get one parkrun closer to the t-shirt.
It's so cool that you're talking about parkrun, because the meetup I was at was our after-parkrun coffee date. We just got parkrun in the US (in my town!) and I've already got 4 runs in so far. I really like your method of sneaking up on a goal, one decision at a time.
FWIW, since you read my goals, I haven't run at all this week, and thus, am behind on my weekly runs. Ugh. :(
Please feel free to call me out. I think I may need it.
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