Written by Steve Jackson
Tip Tuesday
Wowzah!
What a great year for group and individual achievements by the members of this club!
Over 200 members, 50 state marathons completed, PR at Tough Ten, Qualifiers for Boston, Marathon and Half Marathon PR’s
What will 2025 bring? Can 2024 be topped? Can I be one to achieve? What do I want to do? How do I do it?
The end of the year is a great time to consider establishing goals for the new year. Many of you are probably familiar with the yearly task of establishing performance goals at work. A technique often used is to have SMART goals, that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. This same technique can be used for running goals.
Be Specific: Make sure your goal answers what, where, when, why with some detail, rather than a generic “I want to run faster”, consider “I want to run the club 5K race 1 minute faster than I did last year”
Make it Measurable: Make sure your goal can answer how much or how many, such as the above 1 minute faster, or maybe “I want to average 3 more miles a week than I did a year ago”
Make it Achievable: This will definitely vary by individual, not all of us has the ability to run a Boston Marathon qualifying time or run a 5K under 20 minutes or run every Sunday morning. That being said, a good goal will require you to push yourself a little more than in the past.
Make it Relevant: Make your goal personal, something that you want to accomplish and not necessarily something that others are all doing. Ask yourself why is this goal important to me?
Keep it Timely: Put a deadline on your goals, this will help you keep track of your progress towards it. If the goal is to run a specific race, sign up for it. If the goal is to run a specific time for a distance, find a race and sign up for it.
Once you have decided on your goals, you can write them down, make them real. Then start planning to meet them and start tracking them. For your goals that are specific to running certain times and distances there are many training plans available on-line or you can reach out to many of your club members to see what has worked for them. It is also good to share goals with your running buds to see if they are also interested and then you can work them together. Many runners now use Strava and other online applications to track their running. I think the old-fashioned running log works as well, and it can quickly be used to “scroll” through weeks of progress.
I am also very happy to discuss your goals and help with training plans, there is nothing I love more than to hear you call to me:
“Hey Coach, you got a minute, I got a question!”
Here’s some links to articles on Running Goals: