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Goals should be measurable, achievable, and assessable, and written down.  Set high goals and strive to achieve them, but make them within your ability—it can be mentally defeating if you set goals outside your ability given your current fitness, time available, and injury history.  In other words, if you have only 10 hours per week to train and you know you get stress reactions when running longer than 10 miles, it’s probably best not to set your first goal as an Ironman win.  You may be capable with more time and some PT on your foot, but step it up smartly.

There are two types of goals, both equally important.  Performance goals allow you to set benchmarks based on your own performance increases.  These are goals assessed against your performance, or against a given element of your fitness.  Examples of performance goals are: to maintain a given heart rate or wattage average on a given course, to nail your nutrition plan on a race or workout, or to get off the bike feeling ready to run.  These can be either “fuzzy” or scientific, but either way they are measurable and specific. 

Outcome goals are measured against competition or the watch--these are outwardly measurable.  Examples of outcome goals are: to run a PR (personal record) on a certain 10km race or triathlon split, to win your age group in the next sprint triathlon, or to beat John from accounting. 

Many people, however, set goals and then leave it at that.  Instead, write them down and review them periodically.  Put them up on the bathroom mirror, hang them up by your bike in the garage, or put them on the dashboard of your car.  Keep them in mind in your training and on your way to the race.  Think about your goals when setting training objectives for each day.  Then, once your training session or race is over, assess how you did in accomplishing your goal.  Did you meet it?  If so, good for you; cross it off.  If not, why?  Set a new event in which to reach it.  Maybe you need tom set new training objectives in order to meet this goal next time.  Either way, review and assess your goals.

Set your goals and strive for them and you’ll see improvement in your training and racing.  One last thing:  Some goals in every training day should always be to have fun and enjoy the day! 

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