Goals are a funny thing. They can be your best friend, or your worst nightmare. Sometimes gently encouraging you, sometimes telling you to stop whining and get shit done, or sometimes stalking you and making your life miserable. Like friends and lovers, goals are to be chosen wisely.
Goals should be simple and easily defined, but not easily achieved, yet not so tough that they are unobtainable. For example, one of my primary goals as I have restarted running is to PR in the marathon. Anything 4:52 or below and I’m there and will be ecstatic. But if I set my heart on a sub 4:30, do a 4:42, I blew out my PR, but am still unhappy and maybe depressed because I “failed”. Do I have a long term goal of a sub 4:30? You bet your ass I do! A PR in November will be a milestone on my way to an even bigger goal. It is the next taller peak I will see when I summit that 4:52 mountain.
So milestones are important. One of my milestones is to lose 15 pounds by summer’s end. Reaching that goal will push me down the road on my race goals as you gain about 2 seconds per mil per pound lost. I’m on my way. The running and cross training are going well. I have stayed consistent over the past month. My nutrition is improving. I have cut back on the carbs, *mostly*, though good beer is still my weakness! I’ve also started some experimentation with liquid nutrition (of the non-alcoholic variety). There may be a bonus blog post focused on that in the near future.
But there is an even bigger goal out there. I will turn 58 in two weeks, so retirement looms on the horizon. I want to have the health and capacity in my 70s, 80s and maybe longer to enjoy life. That is the real goal.
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