Tie your laces.Commit to your goal
Step 1 to the Marathon – Commitment to Your Goal
I am now about 2 months away from running the streets of New York and at this point in time I am 3 weeks into a 12 week training program for the event. Of course I have already had a solid 6 months or so of training this year to build on as I trained towards the Gold Coast Marathon in July earlier this year. As I have typically found, the Gold Coast Marathon didn’t exactly go to plan with my training load resulting in a painful hip and adductor injury which was overtly discovered as I passed through around the 15 kilometre mark of the marathon – still a long way to go!
I had a goal of finishing the marathon in just under 3 hours – a magic number for the “everyday” marathon runner and my training indicated that I could do it. To do this I needed to average 4 minutes and 15 seconds per kilometre for the full 42.2 kilometre course. The good news is that I managed to keep at this pace for the first half of the event. Unfortunately there was not so good news; my injury didn’t allow me to continue at this pace and the second half of the marathon wasn’t pretty – well it was pretty painful! I grit my teeth and decided that I would continue despite the pain to finish the marathon. I ended up with a time of 3 hours and 31 minutes and a medal for finishing which at the time was disappointing. On reflection though, I realised that I was still able to complete the marathon in the top 15% of all entrants and finishing any marathon is an achievement all in itself. I’ll leave that sub 3 hour goal for another day. One of the big highlights for me was sharing the weekend with my family including running with my 7 year old daughter in the 2 kilometre Junior Dash event. Below you can see my medal and a picture of me with my daughter just before running the Dash.
Commit to a Goal
So I am in a delicate balance between managing to recover from an injury and preparing for another marathon – the big one in the Big Apple. I have make a commitment to this race for quite a while now. In fact looking back I actually decided that I would enter the New York Marathon way back on 26 September 2015 – more than a year before the event. I made enquiries, paid for the entry and travel soon after and I was committed. Of course there is a risk in that – life can get in the way, I can get injured, or something else could go wrong, but in any case I was committed to being there by actually entering and making the investment. Once I did that, I had to go.
For me it is important that I commit to a goal race when setting out on a marathon training plan. I like to sign up early and pay the registration fee, book accommodation and make whatever other arrangements are needed so that I am fully committed to running the race. Of course things can happen like injury or sickness. So far I have been lucky enough to get through these mostly unscathed.
Committing to the race is what gets me up at 4am many mornings throughout the year to get my training in. I logically understand that I have become fitter and healthier as a result, but personally that alone doesn’t drive me. It is that I have committed to being at a race on a certain date and I want to be in the best shape possible.
In the early stages of a training program, I may only have a loose idea of specific goals like my desired race time. I find that this gets sharper and more specific as I get closer to the race and a month or two out I have good indications of what I may be able to achieve. At this point my training becomes more specific and targeted whereas in the early stages it is more of a general movement towards the goal and mostly about building a solid foundation or aerobic base.
At this stage for New York I have an overall goal of running the race and enjoying the experience. It is an iconic event in an iconic location and I want to take it all in and remember the experience of running through the streets of New York. I know that when I have set a goal of achieving a particular time to stretch myself, it’s all about the race and what is in front of me. This time I want to remember running through the 5 boroughs of New York down 5th Avenue finishing in Central Park. At this point I’m not really sure what this equates to for time – probably 3 hours 30 minutes. I’ll adjust this as I go through my training plan and refine it as I get closer to the date depending on how I feel.
So my overall message is that if you are looking to achieve a big goal of some kind, take some early action that commits you so that achieving the goal is a must. Make it difficult to pull out and give you a non-negotiable reason to do all of the hard work needed to get across the line. In my next instalment I will run through the importance of having a plan.
