Why Switching Up Goals Can be a Positive Thing - Coach Tip Tuesday

Although it’s only mid-October and although I always tout the value of immersing oneself in an experience before getting ahead to the next thing, even I have to admit that it is a good time of year for endurance athletes to be reflecting on the current season and considering what path might be best for them to take in the coming year (and really, years…plural).  So continuing the theme of reflection and goal setting that we started last week, this week I want to encourage endurance athletes to really ask themselves why they are doing the races they are doing and setting the goals they are setting.

When considering goals and goal races, there are a few things that are important to remember:

• A goal is a thing that you have deemed to be more important to you than other things.  In other words, a goal is something that is a higher priority to you than other things that could be a priority to or important to you in your life.
• Races in and of themselves are not goals.  Races are one of the environments where endurance athletes seek to accomplish goals that they set.

This may seem like a small nuance, but it’s a very important one.  All too often, I watch athletes register for a race and declare that that race is their goal.  However, I have seen time and time again over the years that this usually isn't actually true.  To test if it’s true or not for you, ask yourself this question: Are you okay with finishing any race you sign up for within one minute of the race’s time limit?  If you are not okay with that time result, then the race itself is not your goal; you have another goal that is separate from the completion of the race itself, and the race is the place/event where you are seeking to accomplish that goal.

Know Your Why

Understanding what your goals are and why those goals are important to you is arguably one of the most important aspects of being an endurance athlete.  It also requires a significant amount of self-awareness and honesty.  An athlete’s “why” is effectively the reason that they do the things they do in endurance sports - both in training and in racing.

After 12+ seasons of being a coach, I have heard a lot of “whys” from athletes that drive their goal setting and what they do.  Many athletes turn to endurance sports such as running, triathlon, and cycling as a way to incorporate a movement practice into their daily life and to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  Some athletes are inspired after watching their friends or family set and achieve endurance sports goals.  Others find joy in being in racing environments, the social aspect of training and racing, and the overall sense of community they get from their sport of choice.  Still others use training and racing as a way to travel and see the world through a different lens.  In almost all cases, even when some or all of these other factors are in play, athletes are seeking to challenge themselves and to see what is possible for them to achieve - both physically and mentally.

Truly knowing and understanding your why is a critical component to finding joy and success in endurance sports training and racing.  Without it, the day-by-day process of enduring (pun intended) the training required to be an endurance athlete will feel lackluster and like a job rather than something you are doing with your disposable time and income for recreation and fun.  But if you have a true sense of your why - and especially if that why is tied to your core and authentic self - then the process itself becomes not only tolerable, but enjoyable.  Since the process (aka training itself) accounts for more than 98% of the time that athletes spend in endurance sports (race days themselves are just a cherry on top of the sundae timewise), ensuring that athletes are invested in and enjoying the process is critical to their longevity in sport, including their long-term happiness and success.

Don’t Just Do Something for the Sake of Doing It

In addition to the examples of why I outlined earlier, another (very common) reason that I’ve heard from athletes about why they choose the races they do and why they set the goals they set is that the races and the goals are the same as what they have done in seasons past.  In a lot of cases, this sameness or this “tradition” is the only reason they’re setting certain goals and doing particular races.

I encourage athletes who are finding themselves doing the same races and/or setting the same goals season after season to really reflect on why they find themselves doing that.  Are they really doing these races and setting these goals because they excite them and matter to them?  If that’s the case, then forge ahead and keep doing the same thing.  Or, are athletes doing the same races and setting similar goals year after year simply because it’s what they’ve become accustomed to doing?  In other words: Are they doing them because it’s comfortable to keep doing the same races and keep setting similar goals and because it’s easier than thinking up new ones?

I’ve talked before about how important it is to face the discomfort dragon in a variety of situations in endurance sports, and especially in training.  But I don’t think the discomfort dragon only rears its head in training; I think that it appears and therefore should be confronted in racing and goal setting as well.  We can become overly comfortable in any area of our lives, and our endurance sports goal setting and training is not an exception to that.  

Once we fall into a routine of doing the same thing year after year, it can be challenging to break out of that routine and/or to see other possibilities of what we might be able to do.  But we should not do something just because we’ve always done it.  If it is something that truly brings us joy year after year, that’s one thing.  But if it’s something we’re doing just because it’s “easy” and/or because “it’s what we’ve always done” and/or because we aren’t investing the effort to think a bit more creatively, that’s not a strong enough why to back the training that is necessary for longevity in sport and long-term goal achievement.

Why Switching Up Goals Can be Beneficial

Doing something new forces presence, and this isn’t only true in training and daily decisions.  One of the downsides to doing the same race multiple times is - ironically - also one of the upsides to doing the same race multiple times: You can compare your results against each other more accurately year over year.  While athletes often talk about personal bests (PBs) or personal records (PRs), which is the fastest time an athlete has completed a given distance or event, the truth is that no two races - even races of the same distance - are created equal.  Race courses vary in many ways, from terrain, to surface type, to ambient weather conditions.  It’s honestly not fair to compare two different races in two different places or two different courses to each other.  Thus, it can be a benefit to do the same event multiple times, as this provides a more accurate comparison of your abilities over time.

However, while racing the same course multiple times over the years can have a positive benefit, there are negative benefits that can come from doing the same events year over year.  As you grow and change as a human, so too will you grow and evolve as an athlete.  A lot of factors can - and will! - impact your ability to train.  Maybe one year you have a lot of time to dedicate to training, and you have fast results at your races.  Then, in a subsequent year, you don’t have as much time to train, and your results are not as fast as they previously were.  This difference in results at the same events can cause stress, angst, and disappointment for athletes as they compare their current selves to their past selves.  In some cases, I’ve observed that athletes will “double down” by repeating the same races and/or goals the following season in an attempt to recapture that previous speed and to exceed those previous results, which may or may not result in the outcomes they want or expect.

Switching up the goals that you set and the races that you do can provide much-needed novelty in your endurance sports life.  Setting new goals and doing different races provides a fresh slate in terms of your results and outcomes, which can feel really invigorating and liberating, especially if you are an athlete who has been doing endurance sports for a long time.  It also can help you to grow, embrace new experiences, and to have the courage to open yourself up to the possibility of failure.  Ironically enough, it is only the possibility of failure and existing outside of our comfort zone that causes us to grow.  (For many reasons, this arena has appropriately been referred to as “The Growth Zone” over the years.)

The Bottom Line

If you find yourself doing the same races and setting similar goals year after year, ask yourself why.  Are you truly invested in and excited by these goals and races?  Or, are you falling into a default comfortable pattern because something in you is afraid to seek out new experiences?  If it’s the latter, seek to broaden your horizons and inject a little creativity into your goal setting and race selection.  This change may be the one you need to find a new level of joy and to increase your probability of success in the coming seasons.