Finding My Running Legs: Lessons Learned on Picking Goals

*Series in progress*  This entry is part of a series I’m writing leading up to my running (walking…but hopefully mostly running) my first 5K.  For more information on this series check out the introduction here or just continue on reading this entry.  I have also included links at the end to the other entries and to both the Terry Fox Foundation and my run fundraising page.

As I talked about in my last entry I am not a natural goal setter and I think one of the reasons that I never took to goal setting was because I never actually knew how to set goals that were realistic and achievable.  In today’s entry of Finding My Running Legs I’m going to talk about the process I have been using to make my goals.  I don’t know if it would work for everyone but in picking and setting my goals I have found that it has been incredibly helpful for me.  My ideas on goal setting are not new or probably all that innovative they are simply what I have found leaves me feeling the most positive about what I am doing.

The first principle I applied was the idea of picking a goal and setting a time frame on it.  I am one of those people with lots of big ideas but I don’t usually apply them to anything.  This time I took that idea and changed it into my goal – to run a 5K – but at first I still didn’t have a timeframe on it.  Running a 5K is something that I have always wanted to do but obviously without a timeframe I hadn’t managed to do it yet, even though I have talked about it off and on for the last few years.  So I went searching for 5Ks that I could run.  I settled on the Terry Fox Run for a couple reasons, one of which was that it was far enough in the future I figured I had lots of time to get ready.  This gave me something that I could happily call a goal because it had not only the idea of what I wanted to do but it had a date in which I would need to do it by.

This led me to my first true lesson about goals and that is while having a big goal is great it at least for me was not motivating in a tangible way.  After I wasted away the first month doing nothing to get ready for the run I quickly realized I needed something more that would actually get me doing something towards my big goal of the 5K.  So it only made sense to set some more goals.  So I basically made a to-do list of all the things I needed/wanted to do to get me from the couch to running.  I didn’t necessarily think of these things as goals at first but that is what they became.  I sat down and brainstormed all the things that would get me where I wanted.  I included the smallest of details including things like join a gym, go to the gym, and actually try running.  There were even a few that seemed a bit silly but they still go on the list things like buy a good pair of runners and figure out how to track my intervals.  Once I had my list of things than I gave myself deadlines because as a procrastinator it is easy to keep putting things off but with deadlines I was more aware of them.

The second lesson that I learned in setting these smaller goals or tasks was that this list had to be a little more flexible then my big goal, although even with my big goal I have tweaked it since I first set it.  As a perfectionist this was a struggle because once I put my mind onto something I really want to make sure I get it and do it 100%.  I keep reminding myself though that the reality is that I have never done anything like this before and so I didn’t really know what all the little tasks should be.  I learned that I needed to be able to not only add new tasks to the list but also change some of the deadlines I had already set for myself as I learned what I was capable of.  I quickly realized for example that my ability to move through the interval training was going to be slower than I had hoped.  In my head one week would be enough to transition my running up to the next level but the reality was my body was not that quick to be able to adjust and do it. This realization also ended up causing me to re-evaluate and modify my first goal of running a 5K to just being able to complete the 5k as quickly as I can while doing as much of it running as I can. 

So with a little trial and error I was able to come up with a list of things in my head that I knew would help get me where I wanted to go…crossing that finish line on the 14^th.  The best part is setting small goals is that working on them seems so much easier and less daunting than thinking about running a 5K.  I know this topic is probably not the most exciting but I hope that it helps.  I can honestly say that while having a big goal is important there is nothing wrong with breaking down into little mini goals that will help build towards that big goal but also remember to cut yourself some slack and allow for at least a little flexibility in those goals (as long as you are still actively working towards them…hehehe).

Tomorrow I will be writing about one of the things that I think is making the biggest difference not only on this goal to run a 5K but also in my ongoing journey to lose weight and become healthier…it is the idea of tracking. 

To donate and check out my progress please visit my page here.

For more information on the Terry Fox Foundation and the run check out their page here.

Finding My Running Legs Previous Entries

• Introduction
• Importance of Goals