goal setting

I started a thread last week provoking discussion about goals.  It's worth reading the various points people make in that thread. 

Fundamentally, goals are something that require a long-term strategy and committment to achieve.  Sometimes, we need to change a behavior (get off the couch and start exercising) to achieve the goal.  Sometimes, we can achieve it by maintaining a behavior (continuing to save money to buy a house).  They are very personal things that you should want to nurture and protect so they come to fruition. 

There's a big difference between saying "I want to average 20 mph at my half-ironman next summer" (a goal) and "I want to average 20 mph on my half-ironman next week" (unless you've been saying that all along, and working to achieve it with your training).  The latter may be more of a dream (if your training pace has been 16-17 mph) or an expectation (if your training pace has been 19-21 mph).  Why?  There really isn't a lot you can do in the next week to make that 20 mph split a reality if you haven't already been training for it.  But over the next year...

Expectations should be realistic.  (Maybe aggressive too, but always realistic.)  If you don't have a million bucks today, there's a good chance you won't have a million bucks tomorrow. 

Goals have no such constraints.  Maybe you want to qualify for Kona even though you haven't completed your first tri.  No problem, you can have that as a goal and you can start working to achieve that goal.  You may not have a million bucks today, but there's no reason you can't have as your goal to have a million bucks 20 years from now.  The challenge is we all have lots of goals and some are conflicting.  Only you can decide which have priority.  IMO, everyone should have at least one or two goals that seem outlandish, that take you out of your comfort zone to see what you are capable of doing.  Some may seem "easy" to achieve.  Here's a personal example.  A few years ago, I took a group of scouts to New Mexico for a backpacking trip.  One of my goals as the tour leader was to have everyone return safely.  Pretty basic, and some might even give it a duh!  Guess what?  Two people came off the trail early because of an emergency back home.  At least I could point to the reason I didn't feel fully accomplished during our return:  I failed to achieve that goal. 

More specifically, I don't change goals for races within a month.  (I say change, because I've probably set goals well before the season started. )  In that last month, I set some expectations (what if the weather is perfect, what if it's stupendously crappy) and usually come up with a range of splits and overall times.  These expectations will get dialed in the closer we get to race day based on weather forecasts and how I'm feeling.  Maybe that race comes at the end of a peak training week, and I'm far more fatigued than I expected to be, so I dial things back.  Maybe I'm feeling great in spite of a huge week and I'm ready to rock the race.  Do I hit all of my goals?  Nope.  Sometimes I'm OK, sometimes I mope (a little), sometimes I recommit to try again.  I didn't hit my 6-hour HIM goal in 2006 (but I did hit my 20 mph bike split goal for that race) and that goal was back on my list for this year.  An injury in June pushed it further out, so that's going to be my focus for training in 2010. 

I hope this helps.