On the Setting of Goals

OK, so last post (almost a year ago) I stated that one of my goals was not to run too many marathons. Well, I can check that one off. Grand total of marathons run since then? Zero.

It turns out that, while setting an ambitious goal like "Qualify for Boston" sounds really good and is great shorthand for what you are trying to do, it does very little for helping you actually achieve the goal. Also not helpful when you're a procrastinator who likes to do things at the last minute.

People love to explain certain tasks by saying "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." Well, qualifying for the Boston marathon is not just "not a sprint" it's not a marathon either. It's like a marathon of marathons.

So, while some business theories state that your goals should be Big, Hairy, and Audacious Goals (note to inventors of term: come up with a theory that has a better acroynm than BHAG), setting that goal is just the start. Then you have to set intermediate goals to achieve the final goal.

That's where I was stuck. I kept thinking about Boston and quickly lost focus as the dream kept fading off into the future. So, my new plan is to stick Boston in the back of mind and put some more achievable goals with more immediate time frames in the foreground.

I also kept trying to extrapolate to see how soon (1 year? 3 years?) I might be able to expect to qualify. I'll be shoving those extrapolations off as well.

So my plan is to break running down into roughly 4 month training cycles. During a given cycle, I might run a marathon, but I might also not, depending on what I feel I need to work on in the short-term. I'll also plan a couple cycles in advance, but I'll allow myself to be vague once I start creeping up on the goals for one year out. Same thing goes with expected pace. As long as I'm meeting my current goals, hopefully everything will work out at the end.

So, the next few training cycles:

April 2011 through August 2011 - Break a 4 hour marathon. This isn't hugely ambitious (at least not compared to Boston qualifying), but as long as I have 4 hours hanging over my head, I'll never be able to focus on anything else. It is a goal that has been haunting me for years and I'll finally put it to bed.

September 2011 through December 2011 - Build a strong base. Ideally, this should be the first goal and then I would break a 4 hour marathon. For injury prevention, it certainly seems the right order. However, I have a half-marathon, a trail run, and a 40th birthday all happening before September 2011. Base building will have to wait until then. But, now that I already have it slotted in, I can be aware that I'm running through the summer without a safety net and be as careful as I can with dealing with injury and fatigue.

January 2012 through April 2012 - Start tempo and speed work. I should say "start speed work in earnest." My speed coach is already pinging me, so the actual start of speed work will likely move up somewhat.

Even this time frame is a bit too long to be able to properly focus, so I'll break each 4 month period down into roughly 5 week goals, but more on that next week.

And that should hopefully do it, three nested set of goals:

1. Sprint (5 weeks)
2. Marathon (4 months)
3. Marathon of Marathon (3 years, 6 months) (this is less than my originally stated time frame of 5 years, but it's needed due to the changes to the Boston qualification methods. But more on that in a future post)