Psychology of endurance sports - goal setting

When someone comes into endurance sports they usually have some goal in mind they want to achieve. It can be as simple as finishing an event or can get more specific by setting certain constraints like performance or time goals.

All of these goals are pretty straightforward. Athletes pick an event, set a goal and work towards it.

Problems come up when the event is far in the future and you have to work for a longer period of time towards something.

That’s where todays topic of goal setting comes into play.

‘A’ goals

An athlete’s ‘A’ goal is a specific goal that they want to work towards. Most amateur athletes have some kind of distance-time oriented goal like finishing a marathon in X hours or going sub-X in an Ironman race. The key point with ‘A’ goals is that they have to be challenging, realistic, and specific.

Challenging

If you run a 10k in 1 hour, a goal of 58 minutes in your next race won’t be a true challenge. If you set it to be 50 minutes, now you will have something that is worth the pursuit and time commitment.

The trick here is to give yourself plenty of room to improve, otherwise you will risk of trying to skip a session here or there since the actual gain you want to achieve won’t be too big.

It’s also worth noting that the fitter you are the smaller those gains will become. The absolute improvement will get smaller and smaller the closer you come to the top performing athletes and your own abilities.

Realistic

No matter how much you believe in yourself, it’s important to stay realistic in your goals. If you are just starting out, it’s very unlikely to you will on place on the podium in a competitive race. Take a look at the results of previous years and make an educated guess to where your capabilities are at the moment.

Take everything into consideration when you are targeting a specific goal for a race. You might be good on flat courses but have a hard time when it gets a little hilly or vice versa.

Study the races you want to take part in and stay realistic in your predications and you will be in a good position to execute on them.

Specific

The more specific your goal is, the more likely you are to realising it. Just saying ‘I want to complete a marathon’ is less specific than to say ‘I want to complete a marathon in under 4 hours’.

The lack of specificity will at some point undermine your desire to improve and you might think that missing a training session won’t jeopardize your ability to finish.

If you make it very specific, however, you will have greater motivation to work hard.

‘B’ goals

‘B’ goals are intermediate steps along the way that will lead you to your ‘A’ goals. They play a key part in keeping your motivation up during a long season of training.

Event-specific goals

You might enter shorter races before your ‘A’ race to see where you are in your current training cycle. However it ends, you will get a motivation boost out of it. If you see improvement, you will know you are on the right track and continue training. If things don’t go as planned, you will know you have a lot more work to do.

Either way, you will know that putting in the work is the only way to reach your ‘A’ goal.

Training-specific goals

Instead of going to training events you can have your personal test to see where you are at. Is your threshold speed improving? Were you able to sustain a higher power output during for a set time?

These information will be valuable to you and your coach when it comes to fine-tuning your training program and keeping you motivated.

Staying focused

No matter what your goals are, it’s important to stay focused on them as much as possible.

The simplest trick here is to write down your goals and put them in a specific place where you can watch them and remind yourself of why you are doing it.

Where you place it isn’t as important as you sticking to reading it and being mindful of them every so often.

It doesn’t even have to a hand written note. It can be anything that will help you stay on track. It can be one of your pictures from a previous race, the image of a finish line from your upcoming race, medals you earned in previous races, or something completely different. Training in your favorite finisher shirts can help you feel motivated when things get tough.

Having goals is essential to staying motivated and that’s why every athlete in any endurance sport has them (as simple or complex they might be) and it’s those goal that will help you stay motivated during the training process and will guide you to the finish line in the end.