"Goals are Dreams with Deadlines" - Diana Scharf Hunt

Here I am for day two as promised!  I’ve decided that reading a series of race reports would be extremely boring to write and even worse to read.  So in a nutshell I’ll just say I’ve worked pretty hard, had some fun, and dropped a lot of time.  In case you care, my current PRs are a 2:20 for Olympic and 4:55 for 70.3.  But, I believe that (at least at this point in my career) times posted or podiums climbed are less important than the goal’s I’ve set for myself. 

There is no better time to consider goals than now.  My season ended about three weeks ago so I’ve been resting up, focusing on my studies, playing with a bit of cross training, and counting the days until base training begins.  Having some time outside of a training plan has given me some time to contemplate my 2013 ambitions and devise a plan to achieve them.  I always have trepidations in stating goals in writing or out loud because I then feel even more let down if they are not met.  But hopefully stating it out loud will make it more concrete and inspire me even further.  So here it is: by the end of the 2013 season, I hope to race a 2:10 oly and a 4:30 70.3.  To drop this much time I am going to have to continue building my base, stay healthy in the spring and focus on speed work, and (more than anything) really clean up my diet and drop about 20 more pounds. 

Yes, my goals are lofty.  I am well aware that hitting these times will not be easy.  However, what’s the problem in setting your sights high?  For example, after racing my first oly in 2:56, I set a goal to race under 2:30 by nationals (2011).  While I only got my time that race down to 2:34, it was still a 22 minute drop and four months later I hit that 2:30 mark.  This year, my goal was to race 2:20 at collegiate nationals.  Once again, I was extremely disappointed when I raced 2:26.  However, my work was not wasted and I eventually raced that 2:20 at the 2012 age group national championship. 

“But hey,” you say, “You promised this wasn’t a race report, what’s your point?!”  My point is that success does not come easily.  It takes hard work, dedication, and above all, perseverance. Disappointment is bound to happen in every athlete’s career but we have the choice to let it hold us back or to use it as fuel to work even harder. 

So as I prepare to jump back into training, I leave you with one more analogy.  You may have to take more than one shot to reach your goal and you may even have to move the target.  But as Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  

Showing off some hardware with a few teammates (Steve and Sarah)

Follow me at https://twitter.com/tri_bailey