If you look at my Strava log, you’ll see that I didn’t get off to a great start at the beginning of 2021. There are a few reasons for this, such as contracting Covid-19 and sub-zero temperatures, but in retrospect it boils down to a lack of well-defined goals. Consistency is key to progress and motivation is key to consistency, but it’s hard to stay motivated without being focused on what you want to accomplish.
I did, of course, set goals for 2021. But I set general goals, such as “Run a faster marathon in October” and “Run a sub-19 minute 5k by the end of the year.” Not that these aren’t good goals to have, but October and December 31st are relatively far off. I didn’t have a game plan for how to achieve this beyond train hard and train smart every day.
Recently, a group of people I work with decided to run a hundred miles by the end of June. As a competitive person, I instantly decided I wanted to be the first to hit a hundred miles. I do, after all, manage a running blog. Immediately, my mileage ramped up. I got back on track running six days a week – my ideal training schedule, but one I haven’t maintained faithfully since my last marathon in October. I ended up hitting a hundred miles in thirty days, becoming the first of our group to do so.
The reason why I was able to kick it into gear and make a mental and physical shift in training is that I had a good goal in mind. There’s a lot of academic literature on goal-setting, but it boils down to about five things: A good goal should be specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, and time-based. Psychologists use the acronym SMART.
When thinking about setting goals, it’s important to be specific. While running a faster marathon is good, it isn’t specific enough to be an actionable goal. My current marathon PR is 3:38, so a specific goal would be something along the lines of running a 3:30 marathon. Even better would be selecting the race I want to run as well. The line between the specific and measurable aspects of goal setting sometimes blurs, but hashing it out even more I could say that my goal is to run sub-3:30 at the Poznan Marathon, which comes out to an 8:00 average mile, and I want to attempt to run splits according to a 10-10-6 racing strategy.
Side note: if you are unfamiliar with the 10-10-6 marathon racing strategy, essentially you start with your goal pace and run the first ten miles slower than your goal pace – about 8:05-8:10. For the next ten miles you run at your goal pace. Finally, for the last six miles (the real “racing” portion of a marathon) you run below your goal pace – fast enough to bring your average down, but not so fast that you burn out.
This goal is measurable because I now have the ability to, well, measure clearly whether I met my goal or not. After the race I can analyze both aspects of my goal – whether I ran sub-3:30 and whether or not my splits were divided correctly. This also allows me to train more specifically. How can you train at “race pace” if you don’t know exactly what race pace is? Additionally, understanding the splits breakdown can help me focus on specific skills, such as running faster at the end of a long run.
One area a lot of people struggle with when it comes to setting good goals is in making them attainable. This is also where it is important to distinguish between long term goals and short term goals. My long term goal is to qualify for and run the Boston Marathon. The qualifying time for my age group is 3:00, but because there are only a select number of slots you usually have to run a few minutes faster than that to give yourself a buffer. While I would love to go out and run a 2:55 in October, given that my current PR is 3:38, a ~45 minute time drop isn’t necessarily attainable. Running sub-3:30 in October is, however, attainable. Over the next few years I can set interim goals, getting faster each race, such that eventually running 2:55 is attainable. But trying to run that fast now would only be discouraging when I didn’t meet my goal in October.
When trying to craft good goals, you must be realistic. While qualifying for the Boston Marathon is, eventually, realistic, qualifying for the Olympics probably isn’t (but fingers crossed?). Additionally, a goal might not be realistic for the specific time in your life as well. For example, if you work all day, getting up early and coming home late, it might not be realistic for you to train for a marathon. A more realistic goal might be to train for a half marathon, which requires significantly less time, and planning to run a marathon later on when your situation changes. This is also the battle for runners who live in places where the temperature drops below zero frequently. It may not be realistic to train for a marathon when you can only run on a treadmill. 20 mile training runs are tough even without adding in the monotony of the treadmill. It may be more realistic to train for a fall marathon, when the weather outside is more conducive to proper training.
Finally, when setting goals you should consider the time you have to complete them. Timelines are important because they help you stay on track. Marathon training blocks are often around three months long, so if I am planning to run a marathon in October, then I know I need to start my training block around the beginning of July. Before then, I can focus on building a strong cardiovascular base, which will sustain me throughout my training block. The converse is true as well, if you haven’t been training specifically for a marathon then it doesn’t make sense to try to run a PR in a month.
At the end of the day, you might be able to make progress without crafting good goals, but you won’t get quite as far as you would otherwise. It helps to write your goals out, as specifically as possible, in your training log or on a notecard you can put somewhere you see every day. If you find yourself lacking in motivation or not really seeing the improvement you’d like to see, take a moment to evaluate whether you have specific goals that can be measured and attained within a given time period. If not, then you know where to start!
How have you tracked goals in the past? Do you have a specific goal-setting ritual that helps you carve out a specific goal? Leave a comment to let us know how you go about setting goals and how you stay on track pursuing them.
If you liked this article you should check out: What Happens When You Don’t Run?
Motivating! PS is there really a Poznań marathon coming up?