Believing in your self and Setting Goals

How believing in your self and setting goals correctly produces success.

Setting yourself up for success in 2015

 Not starting or neglecting to setting yourself up for success for the 2015 most likely will stop you from achieving your goals. With the 2015 triathlon season around the corner, athletes are well into base work and plotting out races and goal. Athletes you need to define and be very specific about what you want to accomplish in 2015. This can be in the sporting world or even if wanting to advance in your workplace. What prevents you from achieving these goals can be from not believing you achieve the goals or that you fear failing while chasing your goals.

 

If you think you are beaten, you are.

If you think you dare not, you don't.

If you like to win, but think you can't

It's almost certain you won't

 

If your goal is to go run a PR in an up coming triathlon you need to believe you can do it. With the quote above, if you go into anything in life thinking you are beaten, your performance/execution will be poor. Once you start believing and getting confident the journey to achieving your goals begin.

Earlier this year while coaching some runners through a tough session consisting of multiple hill repeats, an athlete who was performing well cracked. After completing all her efforts perfectly she let doubt creep into her once she accumulated some fatigue. Right before her last rep she looked at me and for the first time for the entire duration of the set, she shook her head and told me she wasn't going to make it. Now if you guessed she missed her goal time, you are correct. She had already decided she was going to fail before giving it one last chance. YOU HAVE TO THINK YOU CAN, TO SUCCEED.

Failing can be the best thing to happen to you in life. A former duathlon world champion once said that athletes don't ever have bad days. Athletes only have good days and days when they learn something they didn't know. If you set out on a goal to run a 10km in a goal time, and in a key session at that goal pace you fail, you have learnt a valuable lesson about your current training plan. It's not working! This allows you to look into your training and figure out if your too tired or if your plan has not been specific enough. So starting chasing your dreams, and take action along the way if you fail to position yourself back on the right path.

Once you get over the first two hurdles it is time to start planing how to get from your current state to your goal state. The problem you start to seeing is that you will have an athlete say he/she wants to win. If you ask them how they intent to get to winning they have no clue. They think getting from coach to podium is an easy take. It is so easy to think big without realizing you have to start small. For example, if you want to run a half marathon at 7 min mile there are steps to get there successfully. As you can see below, there are number or important steps in arriving at your race ready to achieve you goal.

 

GOAL: Complete half marathon at goal pace

9-Reduce volume to arrive at race fresh and ready to run

8-Practice executing goal pace in smaller races.

7-Prove you can run race pace over 5k, 10k, 15k in training (this allows you to believe and know you can)

6-Train on terrain similar to that you will encounter on race day. (You wouldn't train on flats only if race day course is full of hills)

5-Complete a run at half marathon distance

4-Start developing a nutrition plan for race day and train with nutrition you plan on using race day

3-Slowly build mileage each week to get strong enough to cover distance

2-Be consistent in your training

1-Start running

START: Get gear required for running