Goals. Milestones.

Today I watched my girlfriend Ellen (@physiogirl) complete her first ever marathon.

To some, it may be a surprise, and it certainly was to me until recently, that she had never ran one before today. But having set herself a beast of a goal for 2015, this was only a step in the journey she chose for herself, way back in spring. In order to achieve her goal, she is ticking boxes in her preparation, and today was a milestone she needed to get over…

Goals

Back in March, she came along with me to the EDT endurance camp in Lanzarote, not as an accompanying member, but as a fully registered athlete. Just before leaving, however, she had been diagnosed with a stress fracture in her foot, and spent the whole camp (and a few more months after that), with her foot in an air cast, being generally miserable because she couldn’t do what she wanted to do. It was a stress fracture. One we know can heal and let athletes compete again at the highest level.

Many know Ellen not necessarily because of any particular results (That’s recently. She’s been a three day eventer at a very high level in her teens), but because of her sheer determination to not let anything or anyone stand in her way (including me). So a stress fracture, albeit extremely annoying at the time, wasn’t going to prevent her from roaming around, water run, swim, and cycle.

However, it’s not because she has a will of iron that she manages to do everything she wants to.

Why am I telling you this? It’s simple: the training camp wasn’t for her. In fact, I’d argue that triathlon wasn’t for her. Those goals weren’t for her. We met through sports, and the connecting link at the time was triathlon. She wanted to do more, and go longer, and I helped her improve her cycling and swimming. But what I failed to see was that she wasn’t doing what she’s best built for, and what she loves doing: run. And run far.

I didn’t set those triathlon goals, but the expectation she put on herself wasn’t right. They were lofty goals, but inappropriate.

That didn’t prevent her from trying very hard, and she pushed herself to the limit chasing them. She completed 70.3 Antwerp in just over 6h when she wanted to do 7. She pushed her body to a breaking point at 70.3 Zell-Am-See in the pouring rain and in very cold conditions to finish the race. For that, she got long lasting cold effects after the race, and was since told she’s got Reynauds syndrome, but all that mattered back then was that she did finish it. However, she failed twice at getting around Lanzarote 70.3. Once for hypothermia. Once because of a knee problem. And that’s where we knew something wasn’t right.

Setting goals and expectations is something she has to do carefully, and I am always weary to discuss them with her because we are both extremely competitive, and she was (until recently) still measuring herself to me. (No matter what she says!)

So my first piece of advice would be to set your goals appropriately. By all means: aim high. In fact, shoot for the stars! But do so in a discipline (or 3!), that you know you can do and enjoy doing. And unless you’re at the top of your sport, don’t measure yourself to others. It’s bad for you, and it’s bad for them.

Ellen wasn’t enjoying much the wetsuit swimming with 1000 other people bashing her around at a race start… Neither do you? No problem! There are other events to enter!

I know she loves running (especially early mornings to catch the sunrise), so it’s no surprise that she’s now turning towards ultra running. That will suit her a lot more, and it will give her more piece of mind that she put herself into a place that she knows she’ll love. And I won’t follow.

Milestones

If you decide to run, there is kind of a natural progression: jog, run a 5K (park run), a 10K (local athletics race), a half-marathon (getting there!), or a marathon (Boston, New-York, Paris, London… but not only). For many, the marathon is the running grail. Much like riding 200K on a bike or swimming 10K (maybe, I don’t know… It seems long to me!) But there are longer, much longer events.

I’ll be honest, I know nothing about ultra running. For that, I’d encourage you to go check the amazing journey of Kate Driskell and bombard her with questions. But there’s one thing I learnt along the years that helped me tremendously: know what I can do right now, and where I want to be next.

I still remember huffing and puffing hard, barely completing without stopping a 5Krun around my workplace in 2007. That was the time I took on triathlon, as a friend roped me in. I couldn’t swim one length without needing a rest to recover. Talk about lofty goals! It seems that it wasn’t the right goal, but having never really done any sports, I really enjoyed the journey and the diversity. I had set myself the goal to complete the London Olympic Triathlon the following year.

On my journey to get there, 10 months later, I got bored, and I got scared. At some point, I wasn’t sure why I was training, and if it was actually working. And the last thing I wanted to do was to arrive at the Docklands shit scared, having no idea how to do anything on that kind of scale. No amount of book or online forum reading would help anyone in that. So I set myself an intermediate target: a super-sprint triathlon at Eton-Dorney.

That first race wasn’t about getting around as fast as I could. It was about reassuring myself that I could do it. I had never swam in a wetsuit in open water, and had never swam with other people around me. I didn’t really know what a brick session was, and I had absolutely no idea about nutrition. But I knew that I had to get on with this small step before I got to the big one.

When I exited the water, I was one before last. But that didn’t matter, because at that time I knew that if I didn’t explode or crash on the bike, I’d finish. The swim was my problem and I had conquered it. I finished the race elated, and firmly setting my eye on the London triathlon, now knowing better what to train for.

If you follow me a little bit, you know that I didn’t stop there. But it’s this sort of little steps that make the bigger journey more manageable, more enjoyable, and easier on your mind.

The point is: if you’re setting yourselves great goals for next year, do think as well about the journey to get there. All training but no testing in actual races (smaller races), will not make you more confident in your ability to complete a harder / longer event.

So if you’ve got a 10K goal, make sure you test yourself at smaller ones. Whether physically or mentally, either smashing it, or just to check that you can complete. “Smaller” means not only distance, but also “lower key”.

As an example, Ellen completed today the “Phoenix Year End Marathon”. There weren’t many runners, and only a couple of gazebos at either end of the course for aid stations and lap counting. It was a no pressure event, a far cry from the London or New-York events and their thousands of runners, so you could get into your own rhythm without fear.

Ellen ran a Marathon as a milestone? I hear you say… Yes. Despite me thinking she was “the runner”, and had all the experience, she had never done one, and needed to get over the mental barrier… But a marathon as a milestone? Yeah… She has entered the “toughest footrace on Earth” next year. The “Marathon des Sables”: five and a half back to back marathons in six days in the Sahara desert… As I said: lofty goals! And following this pattern of training and testing her physical and mental strength along the way, I have no doubt my amazing other half will get to her goal next year. Again… I won’t follow!

If you haven’t already done so for 2015: set lofty goals for something you’ll enjoy training for and take part in. And make sure you have intermediate milestones that will help you physically and mentally on your journey to get there.