Authentic Voices: Letting Go of Goals

May 10, 2016

Several weeks ago, I talked about the importance of authenticity in running and in writing. This week, I’m excited to bring you a very special series of insightful and inspiring running articles written by four women who epitomize what it means to be authentic. While I’m off the grid hiking, rafting and camping this week, their voices will fill these pages – reminding us about important lessons in life and in running.

Our first authentic voice is from Laura Norris, a running coach, blogger, outdoor enthusiast, distance runner and Midwest transplant living in Seattle, Washington. Laura writes about running, hiking and food on her blog This Runner’s Recipes, which has become a favorite running resource for me. Laura has a passion for helping runners achieve their goals through healthy eating and research-backed training. When she’s not running, coaching, hiking or writing about her adventures, she loves to head to the mountains with her husband Ryan and their adventurous puggle named Charlie. Friends, meet Laura as she opens up today on the power of letting go of our goals.

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Hi, I’m Laura. I am a goal setter. Goals manifest in my mind like words upon a page, and then morph into a fire burning deep in my bones. Some may call me single-minded. If I miss a goal, I pick myself up, analyze what I did wrong and try again, repeating the process until I succeed.

Sometimes this fire can become consuming, as those of you who set and chase goals can relate. A goal that once provided motivation suddenly becomes a source of stress.

Letting Go of Goals Graphic

I have come to believe that letting go is part of the art of achieving goals. You don’t want to let go as in wave a white flag and forget your goal; rather you let go of the fixation upon the end result, the worries and what ifs, and immerse yourself in the process and journey.

Today, I want to describe the ways in which I firmly believe your running will benefit from letting go of a sole focus on time goals. But first, so you don’t think I’m crazy or someone who doesn’t care at all about goals, let me share with you my story

There’s a bitter truth about running that many of us choose to ignore: with setting goals comes missing goals. After running a 1:46 at my first half marathon in fall 2014, I set the goal of running a sub-1:40 half marathon and a BQ (Boston Qualify) marathon. Go big or go home, right? I missed both of these goals in 2015. I crashed and burned at my second half marathon, and my marathon was wrecked by an upset stomach.

Rather than having power over my goals, I had allowed my goals to have power over me, to determine my happiness and satisfaction with my running. I wasn’t happy with my races nor was I proud of my times, even if they were objectively good times.

I set similar goals for 2016, but then I let go of them. I still wanted to achieve them, but a light bulb went off in my head that achievement of goals is never forced. Instead, I focused on working from where I was, training hard, mentally preparing for races and enjoying the journey. I still aimed for that sub-1:40 half, but once I began training, I let go of that goal. If it happened for my spring half marathon, then it happened; but if I missed that time, well, I wanted to be proud of my effort and have enjoyed the training and the race. Sub-1:40 or not, that mattered more.

And so I did; I tucked that goal away and focused on my training. I took a different approach; rather than stressing about hitting every pace, I tuned into my body and trained based on perceived effort. Instead of worrying how a week-long trip to London would affect my training, I ate, drank and explored my way with my husband through one of my favorite cities, fitting in short runs only twice on the trip.

On race day, I started slow. I listened to my body’s signals of effort, trusted my training and above all trusted myself. A smartly run race mattered more than the time on the clock. I let the 1:40 pacers run far ahead of me; by mile 8 I passed them. I finished the race with a smile on my face, hands raised in victory, as I crossed the finish line in 1:38:40.

Laura Norris Lake Sammamish Half

By letting go of my goal, I released myself from self-imposed pressure, learned to enjoy the journey and found myself capable of more than I could have believed when setting my goals. As a coach to other runners, I have noticed the same results when I encourage my athletes to focus on the journey rather than obsessing over time goals: they enjoy training, race well, avoid injury more frequently and more often than not surprise themselves along the way.

What happens exactly when you release yourself from the pressure of a strict time goal for a race?

You learn to trust yourself.

A few years ago, training based on perceived effort unnerved me. I am data-minded person, a daughter and wife of engineers who loves running in part because of all of the numbers and data feedback. How would I know if I was training hard enough without goal paces to hit?

Here’s the catch: your body does not know pace, it simply knows effort. A 7:30 min/mile pace may be half marathon pace for me now, but for some runners it is an easy day pace, and for other runners it’s a pace only seen in hard speed workouts. Effort, on the other hand, remains the same, even as you gain or lose fitness.

Matt Fitzgerald’s popular book on endurance sports psychology, How Bad Do You Want It?, features a chapter titled “The Answer is Within You.” That simple concept profoundly transformed my approach to training and racing, as it should for you. The answer to achieving your goals, to enjoying your running and to doing well in your next race lies not in a pace chart, one particular workout or a specific time on the clock: the answer to how to train well lies within you.

Your body knows what effort feels right for each workout. Your body knows how many miles per week produce the most improvements and how many miles per week would lead to over-training. Running based on perceived effort and intuition requires trust in your body. At times, trusting your body and gauging effort can be more mentally demanding than following a pace on your Garmin. But over time, this technique will improve your confidence.

You find joy in the journey.

I genuinely enjoyed my previous training cycle so much more than any training cycles I did in 2015. Why? Because I released myself from the pressure of a goal and let myself enjoy the training.

When you enjoy your training and workouts, you do them more consistently. Without self-imposed pressure or a sense of dread going into any run, you often find you still push yourself when you need to, but that without the mental fatigue of stress, you more easily hit faster paces. The joy of running, which first beckoned you to lace up your shoes, returns without the overwhelming pressure of a particular goal time.

You maintain appropriate priorities.

There emerges the temptation, particularly when you begin training for a formidable race such as a marathon or ultra, to throw everything you have into training.

When your priorities are rightly ordered, everything else falls into place. No matter how big your goal, a race is only that: just a single race. Too often, when you become very focused on one goal, your life begins to revolve around nothing but running a very particular finish time. Life continues during training, so live life and find a way to balance training with family, career and fun. Chances are, you will still be more than capable of completing your workouts in training and of running a strong and smart race; but you won’t come to resent training or feel mentally burned out.

Consistency is what matters in success. As long as you’re completing roughly 85 percent of your workouts as prescribed, give yourself the room to live. Because after you cross the finish line, whether or not you achieved your goal, what will really matter? The journey and the process, not just the finish.

Have you ever let go of your goals and surprised yourself in a race? Tell us about it. What resonated most with you from Laura’s authentic words?

Comments

Allie

Oh Laura – I needed to read this exact thing as I head into my big race weekend!!! I’m in the midst of writing my final post before I leave and I’m talking about letting go of a time/place goal, running without a garmin and just getting it done with enjoyment. Now I will obviously need to link to this!!! Love seeing you here on one of my fav blogs 🙂

rUnladylike

Good luck this weekend Allie! I’ll be cheering for you virtually! xo

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Oh Allie I’m so glad – thank you!! I’m excited to read your post and thank you for including my link! I’m even more excited for your race – you have thrived this training cycle and now it’s time for you to enjoy the victory lap! 🙂

Marita

What an amazing and thought provoking post, that comes just at right time as I start training for Augusta’s 70.3! Can’t wait to read more from the authentic voices series!

rUnladylike

Hi Marita! So exciting about your Augusta training. Augusta 70.3 was my first Half Ironman and it is a great race and experience. If you search for Augusta on my search bar you’ll find all my recaps and posts about it 🙂 Happy training. xoxo

Marita

Hi Jesica! Thanks for the response 🙂 I’ve referenced your race report and posts about Augusta a few times already, and it’s one of the reasons why I signed up for the race! Thanks for creating such awesome content and meaningful conversations for all of us regular athletes!

rUnladylike

Hooray! So glad they were helpful!!! Feel free to email me if you have any other specific questions. You will love it!!! Thanks so much for your kind words and for reading! It means a lot. xo

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Thank you, Marita! How exciting about your half Ironman! No matter what the finish time, that will be an incredible journey through training and racing. Few people can say they’ve done a 70.3 tri! Good luck on your training and happy running/cycling/swimming! 🙂

Gabrielle from Austria

This is so wonderful!

As a slow runner I always wanted to be “faster” and tried so hard doing so. However, when I relaxed and began to take it easy I began to see improvements in Speed.
Last year I ran a very hilly halfmarathon in Austria, the “Welschlauf” with 600 meters in heigth.
I expected to finish in hopefully sub 3 hours, but came in 2:24! I ran without watch, feeling great.

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Hi Gabrielle! That is awesome how you’ve seen improvements in speed when you began to take it easier – I truly believe that easy miles and being easy on oneself is the way to improve and stick with the sport in the long term. And congrats on the fantastic race time! That race sounds so tough with those hills and you crushed it!

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Thank you so much for including me in this series, Jesica! I look forward to reading the other authentic voices this week!

Angie

Thank you so much for this enlightening and honest post! Every so often I run naked – no garmin and no headsets, and it is so liberating. I admit, however, that it would be difficult to ditch the garmin when training for a race. I start my 70.3 training Monday so I will try to do this for a run or two. Any recommendations how to ease into it? Do you just try one run a week without a garmin and running based on RPE, or do you have to throw the garmin out completely? Thanks again!

Laura @ This

Hi Angie! I’m glad you enjoyed the post – I enjoyed writing for Jesica’s wonderful blog. I find that wearing the Garmin but setting it to show only time (time elapsed or time of day) and running along a route where you know the approximate distance helps easing into it. That way you have the data to review afterwards and the feeling of wearing the watch, but you can’t see the pace during the run. I started with 1 run per week this way for a few months and now do most of my runs based on perceived exertion with the Garmin showing clock time (but still recording so I can see the feedback later if I wish, plus it’s nice to know the elapsed time just so you don’t lose track of time). It’s a good compromise, because there is value in seeing the feedback after the run but then you also become more in tune with your effort. I hope this helps! 🙂

Jess @ Jess Runs ATL

Thanks for the great post Laura! After a particularly terrible half marathon about a year ago, I’ve been working (with Jesica as my coach!) on running more by feel, and have had really great races since then…including two unexpected PRs (half marathon and 10k). I love your advice to just focus on the journey….it’s a great reminder as most of us start thinking about fall races. Thanks for sharing!

Laura @ This

Thank you, Jess! That’s awesome how Jesica has helped you run more by feel. I really do believe it’s the way to go for PRs and I’m so happy to hear you’ve run PRs. Good luck on your training! 🙂

Jennifer@CoachMom

Awesome advice! In all aspects of life, really, not just running. When the sole focus on anything you are doing is the goal itself, you forget about the process that will get you to your goals. It becomes stress and pressure instead of full investment and enjoyment in the process. We do these things out of choice generally because we enjoy doing them. If we pressure ourselves out of the love of it because we are too focused on a predetermined outcome, then the goal stops even meaning as much. Thanks!!

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Thank you! I love what you said about the goal losing meaning if we lose love the of the sport – so true!

Kimberly

Thank you for sharing, Laura. I am often too consumed by numbers and after being in a really long slump, I’m trying to re-train myself and just get out there. I haven’t quite let it all go as I still wear my Garmin but I won’t look at it until I’m done. I’ve surprised myself a few times and it’s been a great way for me to learn to trust myself, focus on how it feels and enjoy the run. Thanks again!

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Thank you, Kimberly! It’s very easy to get consumed by numbers – they’re an easy metric to use and running does have quite a few of them. That’s a fantastic approach you have to not look at your Garmin until you’re done. I do that also a lot because it’s the best of both – running by effort but then there is some data feedback which helps show progress. I know you’ll continue to surprise yourself, and most of all I’m glad you’re enjoying running!

Carly @ Fine Fit Day

I love this Laura. I think every runner can relate – thank you for being so honest and open about it! I always surprise myself with my pace when I don’t look at my watch at all (just keep it on to check splits afterward). We all need to learn to trust ourselves a little more.

Laura @ This Runner's Recipes

Thanks, Carly! I do the same – I like to check the splits afterwards as well, and I’ve noticed my pacing is consistently so much more even when I run by effort rather than letting my watch show my pace. Self-trust is difficult, but I agree with you that it’s a skill worth having as a runner!

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