Wow, 2008 already. New Year turned out pretty well, we did a short ski trip up to Sun Peaks with some friends. We had a great time. Funny, it was weird driving past the signs for the turn off to Penticton; I've got such great memories from IMC and am looking forward to getting back there next year. It was easy to imagine we could turn off and it would be sunny, calm, and green there just like it was in August.
My coach Scott sent out an email to all of his 2008 athletes setting some context and asking each of us to send in our goals for the coming year. I sat and thought about this for a while and then finally called him to get some help getting started. For some reason I was really having trouble coming up with concrete goals. I had these general ideas but for some reason I was getting stuck on the particulars for how to set them.
Even though I understand the race now, I'm still hesitant to put time goals on my Ironman races. But at some point that becomes something that is more reasonable to do. I definitely think a time goal for your first Ironman is a bad idea - maybe as you become more confident in the distance it's OK.
Another idea is to do my goals based on pack position. For example, I was 23% out of the water at Canada, a bit improvement from my 32% performance at Arizona. At both races I was 12% off the bike. However, I was 5 minutes faster and 5% slower relative to the pack there. Hmm, so that's not perfect either.
The first thing I did was to go dig up my goals that I had for this year. Here's what I'd come up with in October 2006:
2007 GOALS
1) Stay healthy through April 15th (IMAZ)
2) Finish my first IM with good fitness and race execution
3) Build a training cadence that I can maintain consistently over months
4) Do sub-11 at one of IMAZ or IMC
5) Find an excuse to buy more bikes (this never changes)
The first thing that jumped out at me was how attainable those goals seem now. Part of me thought "really? that's it?" At the time they were big and I wasn't terribly confident about (1) and (3). It's a great example of something I read on Gordo's blog last year: "People constantly overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term." Keep chipping away at challenging goals over time and one day they might not seem so challenging anymore. Anyway, I think it's always a good idea to take a look back at where you've come from in all aspects of your life. For me, I think if you'd told me 10 years ago where I'd be at relationship-wise, career-wise, financially, and athletically in 2008, I would have had some trouble believing it.
So on to 2008. I was kind of struggling with goals even after looking back. I definitely have a goal of getting to Kona. I don't want to aim to low but I think realistically I'm looking at hitting that one next year, in 2009. But in that context Scott asked me some hard questions about my goals and what they meant to me. Basically he asked me what I'm willing to de-prioritize in my life to achieve these goals. Am I willing to sacrifice the effort I put into work? My friends? My relationship with Deb? Other sports? Trips? His point was a good one, and there's no right answer; it's a good idea to know where your limit is, just in case you're getting close to it. He also asked me to think about why I want to qualify for Kona.
I was surprised how unprepared I felt to answer these questions. For some reason it's way easier for me to do it and pretend those meta-issues don't exist. Maybe that means I'm not going to be as accountable in the end, maybe it means it reserves me some flexibility to change direction if I decide I need to. I think it's probably the latter for me.
After talking with Scott, I did settle on a broad goal of getting down pretty close to 10:30 this year (or, if the conditions are particularly nasty, at an equivalent pack position). I think my super-focus on running this winter will get me a long way towards that and just building deeper fitness will take care of the rest. Basically, I figure that if I can get to sub-10:30 this year, I'll be well set up for 2009.
But I do know why I want to go to Kona. I want to go to Kona because it's a goal that is so far outside of my normal goal-setting process that it's forcing me to do a bunch of things outside my comfort zone. Most of the goals in my past were things that were completely in my control that I always knew I'd get to. It was a matter of just breaking it down into steps and executing. I'm good at that. Getting to Kona is a totally different thing that requires a lot of work that may-or-may-not pan out (a 60 minute swim may just not be in the cards for me...then what?), it requires some luck (depends on who shows up at a given race, etc.), and it requires trusting your own ability to do things tomorrow that you can't do today which is very hard. When you're absolutely pegged from a workout or race and it's still just not fast enough it's easy to tell yourself you're just not going any faster. I've never considered myself someone who could go to the World Championships in anything.
I am still struggling with what exactly I'm willing to do to get there. I know I love the training and I love being fit and I love the ever-growing list of great people I've met in the sport. And I nailed all of my goals from 2007 so maybe I should just not worry about it and keep doing what I'm doing. If that stops working, then maybe it's time to re-evaluate.