Like a lot of would-be triathletes, this is my season of planning. Your coach asks (or you ask yourself), “What are your goals next year?” Many of us write down a list of races, ascribe to each of them a grade (A, B, C). One or two will be “A” goals. And your coach, or you yourself, will build a training plan to hit your goals, particularly the A’s. To be clear (indeed, as I’ll make clearer later) this is a great idea: it gives a shape and a point to what you do with your training time.
But I have a lot of problems with goals, especially outcome goals. I sign up for an Ironman and then halfway through the training year realize (or think) it’s out of reach, become demoralized, and then don’t persist in my training.
I was intrigued by something Patrick Delorenzi says in one of his videos about Ironman training: that he trained toward an Ironman, but didn’t register until he was close to ready. This directionality appealed to me.
“Directional” goals for 2025
For two years I’ve been working with Kimberlee Bow on my consistency and self-, well, actualization. We discussed goal-setting a lot. Early on I came to realize (duh) that process goals were more useful than outcome goals; and toward the middle of this year (2024) I came up with the idea of having directional goals. Through November and December as I worked on thinking through “what I wanted to do in 2025” I came up with three.
Before I discuss them, let me say that directional goals are not timebound, so they aren’t classic SMART goals; rather they’re decisionmaking tools, i.e., you ask, Does this activity take me in the direction I want to go?
So my directional goals:
- Be fit enough to do a half-Ironman in 8½ hours. When I formulated this I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able actually to do a half-Ironman under the cutoff. What was important was that I’d strive in that direction, and that my workout plan would take me in that direction.
- Get back to running. I started running 40 years ago, in early middle age. I love running, however slow I do it. A bunch of injuries, a loss of fitness (a lot of that, of course, age-related) and now I don’t run. I have no pace goal: let’s get me back to an easy jog, programmed walk breaks are ok, and see what we can do with that.
- Improve my body composition. I know this is a euphemism, but it’s a useful one. I don’t want to focus on weight; I want to focus on eating about the right amount of the right stuff, and doing things that improve my strength. I’m a mesomorph, kind of chunky even when I was at a good weight, and that’s ok; but let’s try to make the rest of my seventies and (fate willing) my eighties easier on my joints and tendons. (I have a plan, which I’ll post about later.)
Ta da! The “A” goal!
For the first half of December I had an elaborate “goals and intentions” documents, tons of overthinking. Lots of would-like-to-do races. Lots of timebound things. But I kept coming back to my birthday: Friday, September 26, 2025. I’ll be 72 years old. What could I do that would be 72-ish, challenging but feasible, but wouldn’t put me under so much pressure I’d give up hope in July?
Answer: to do a 72-mile self-triathlon on my 72nd birthday:
- No time limit, but has to be done more or less without stopping;
- Legs are more or less in Ironman proportions, but no leg is shorter than in a half-Ironman
(A “self-triathlon” is my term for a swim-bike-run workout.)
Lots of logistics and decisions to be made, but I’m telling my overthinking brain to let it go, and make decisions closer to when I need to.
Going forward
I’m hoping this is the first of a series of weekly blog posts where I discuss my progress toward that “A” goal.
Today, as I write (Saturday, December 21, 2024, 40 weeks less a day to The Big Day) I’m off my feet because I had a toenail permanently removed on Thursday. The enforced rest is a nice period to what’s come before, and a mental and physical launch pad for what’s to come.
Road of Iron 