If you’ve been following my NaNoWriMo posts over the last 5 days, you may be wondering if I will ever get to the subject of running, seeing as that is the supposed focus of my blog. Well, here we go.
You know how sometimes…
You get all excited about a race that you worked hard to prepare for and then something happens to derail you? Maybe it’s an illness or an injury or a family event or a world event or a sudden feeling that you’ve reached a bit too far beyond your current readiness. Whatever it is, the excitement has now been turned sideways and you are deciding how to proceed.
So that is the state I find myself in right now.
I was planning on running Chicago 2020 in my next attempt to qualify for an entry into the Boston Marathon. If you are not living on a secluded island (and maybe even if you are), you know that 2020 turned sideways for a lot of people. In my case, it’s only a setback. I know that others’ lives have been truly devastated in far more significant ways and for those people I will always feel an incredible sadness, yet I too feel a sense of sadness and loss.
For me, I know I have to create a strategy for moving forward. Taking what I’ve learned from my research into why I don’t finish things and my research into strategies for changing that, I need to analyze my goal and put it through a few tests.
First, I’ll examine whether this is a goal worth pursuing…
1 – Is this challenge around something that I love? YES RUNNING!
2 – Will it be easy? DEFINITELY NOT!
3 – Is there intrinsic motivation? That is, will I enjoy the journey, even if I fall short of the finish line? With help from readers like you, I think I can say YES! I’m hoping to connect with other like-minded goal-seekers who are stretching to reach a life-long goal and that in itself will be hugely rewarding!
If you apply these same 3 questions to your goal/challenge, make sure that if it’s not going to be easy, it is around something you love AND that you’re confident you will get joy from the journey!
Next, I’ll apply some strategies to increase the odds that I will finish…
1 – Estimate how long it will take to reach this goal and multiply by 3. Interesting. When I first thought about this goal in 2017, I thought it would take me 1 year of hard, focused training and then by running the 2018 Chicago Marathon, I would punch my entry ticket to Boston.
What happened you ask?
I did start training in 2017 and I did run the 2018 Chicago Marathon; however, I injured myself 5 weeks before the race (that’s a story for another post) and my time of 4:31 did not come near a qualifying entry.
Following this advice, I need 3 years of training and 3 total attempts at qualifying. I think this is sound advice as I’ve found that my training “base” hasn’t been as easy to build as I originally thought. Ok, I’m down with this. Chicago to Boston qualifier in 2 more years. We can do this – notice how I’ve already added you to my team 🙂 I want to be a part of your training team too, so comment below what you are training for!
2 – Based on the estimate above, decide if it’s worth starting (or in my case, continuing). I am locked and loaded and definitely committed. I think the journey with others who are stretching themselves to reach a long-term, lifelong goal will be worth all the time and effort. How about you?
*If you’re wondering what NaNoWriMo is… it stands for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual event that began in 1999 as a challenge to writers to write a novel of 50,000 words in one month! Whew, crazy right? Not everyone uses this challenge to write a novel. Take me for example, I signed up for NaNoWriMo and challenged myself to write one blog post every day for a month and that is what you are seeing in these NaNoWriMo posts!!!
I’d love to here the exciting journeys you are embarking on!!! Let me know in the comments below!