Let's Hear it for Fuzzy Goals!

People talk a lot about goals. About how necessary they are and about how to set them:
Be very specific!
Write them down!
Make them public!
Have A, B, and C goals!
Dream big!
But have definable, smaller goals along the way!

I'm not here to say any of that is bad advice, or that I never use any of those techniques, but as it is the time of year for goal/resolution-oriented posts, I've been doing some reflecting on my own goal-setting techniques.

The thing is, my best running results have come when I threw the specific time goals and race goals out the window and focused only on process. That is a 100% truth in all of my seasons of racing, in every running era of my life. The vaguest goal of all - To Train Well and Hopefully Run Faster - has been the one that has worked best for me.

There was one spring season where I really wanted to break 18 minutes in the 5k. I felt like then my life would be complete. I thought about it a lot, I knew the splits, I visualized, I wanted it very much. I ran some good races, and some prs, but in the end I came up about 5 seconds short. In the ensuing off season, I focused on working on some weaknesses, and early the following season, with no specific time expectations, just wanting to see where I was, I hopped in a 5k and ran about 17:45. I blew through that 18 minute barrier without even thinking about it.

One fall I was training for a marathon. Every amateur marathoner wants to break that 3 hour barrier, but I thought I probably wouldn't be ready for another year or two. Instead of training for a specific marathon pace, I focused on doing my long runs by feel and letting my body figure things out. By the end of the segment, it was apparent that I was in killer shape, and that running under 3 hours shouldn't be a problem. But instead of going out at sub 3 pace, I ran by feel, starting well slow of that and easing into it, just like I did on all my long runs. I ran by feel and crushed it, running 2:56 on a big negative split and feeling like a million bucks.

After that race (a 14 minute pr), all of a sudden the Trials standard (which at the time was "only" 2:46) seemed, well, if not reasonable, at least a possibility.
Naturally I thought that I just needed to do a little bit more in my next segment. I am not one of those people who has to be held back all the time, but I still managed to get myself in just enough of a hole to cause a hormone imbalance and overtraining, which sidelined me from serious training for 6 months.
My next segment after that, armed with new knowledge about what I needed for recovery and nutrition, and eager to get back on my Trials quest, I attempted to run through this little nagging pain in my arch. The nagging little pain turned into full blown Plantar Fasciitis, and my foolish attempt to run through it sidelined me for another 6 months after the marathon (that I had to drop out of anyway).

Yes, I was learning my limits, but the point is that I had been blinded by that "dream big" goal. I wasn't being smart. I wasn't focusing on staying healthy. Distance running is a long term endeavor. The single biggest thing that helps you improve is consistent training. I knew all that and still I was blinded by how awesome it would be to qualify for the Olympic Trials! Holy cow, what an awesome goal, right?

Having goals like:
doing my stretches after every run
remembering to stand up more at work so I don't get desk-job hamstrings
going to bed by 10 pm on weeknights

is not very exciting.

Process goals generally aren't very exciting. And maybe I'm just getting old, but over the last few years I've finally learned that process really is almost everything good about running. Races are fun and are a nice reward for hard work, but you have to love the process to love running. And you have to work on improving your process if you want to improve.

So, with a new year upon us, I'd like to give a big shout-out to the often under-appreciated small, boring, process goals. Because 95% of running is the process.
And to vague, fuzzy goals. Because "Run Faster" can handle modifiers (than last season, than last race, than ever, etc), and because in the big scheme of things, that's all any of us really wants, right? We just want to run faster.

Closing out the season on a low note - Jingle Bell Run race recap

This morning I finished up my racing season at the Jingle Bell Run 5k in downtown Portland.

Here's where I would normally give you the blow by blow race account, but there's just not that much to say about it. It was boringly not good. Pretty disappointing, actually, but there wasn't much I could do about it today. I didn't do anything stupid, no major meltdowns. I went out like I planned to, at just under six minute pace for the first mile, which was supposed to allow me to be relaxed and ready to step on the gas, but I just didn't have anything after that. I slowed a bit over the next two miles and came home in a crappy 19:05.

It was kind of confusing.

Just before my last race, I'd started to feel a little more like myself in workouts, and that last race felt like a turning point as well.
And since that race, I've had some drastic improvements in training, most notably in recent long runs. I'd closed out a couple of 15 milers comfortably at 6:45 pace, and last weekend I included a 7 mile progression run in my long run where I just set the effort level and ran, and every single mile split was considerably faster than I expected.

At the same time, it hasn't all been roses. I had some workouts that felt harder than they should be, and one week I had a single travel day for work that totally messed me up. A single travel day should not be that hard to recover from.

It finally occurred to me that I'm still in what I like to call "the grey area" as far as iron goes. I've been in this place before at least once a year, but this is the first time I've ever experienced it on the way up, so it feels a little different.

You see, with my previous method of obtaining iron (by IV), my iron would go way way up, and then it would start dropping as I used it. So I went from a bad place to an awesome place very quickly. At some point on the way down, I would start to feel less good. There's a range there, which for me I have estimated to be a ferritin level between 60 and maybe 75, when things are not awesome, but not yet awful.
The grey area.

When you hit it on the way down, it first manifests as the occasional "off" workout, or maybe just not quite feeling as recovered as you normally do. The occurrence of "off" days gradually increases until you realize what's going on, but it really does take a while for things to get all the way bad. And since you were fit and doing well before, you can sometimes ride it out for a little while.

Now, for the first time, I'm experiencing the grey area as my iron is on the way up.

I got my ferritin checked about six weeks ago, and it was 60. That was great news. It meant that my iron had stopped plummeting, leveled off, and then started to rise again, all without getting the ol' IV iron. It had taken a couple of months for that to happen, but hey, the TCM was working, so I was pretty stoked.

And when I started seeing those recent improvements in my long runs, I thought, ok, now we're talking. Based on the workouts that had gone well, I felt like I was going to finish off my season with a 5k around 18:15, and then I'd reset and hit the ground running next season.

But, you know, there's that pesky grey area. The reality is I'm still kind of rolling the dice whenever I set out to do a hard effort. I never know how it's going to go. Today I rolled the dice and lost. I think in another month or two I'll be solidly in the "go" zone, but for now I'm just going to have to accept that there will be off days.

So yes, I'm disappointed not to end my season on a good race, but I'm pretty excited to put this last running year behind me. While there were many other good things in 2014, the running part fucking sucked. Until just these past few weeks, almost all of it was hard. HARD. And not the challenging, good kind of hard, but the banging-your-head-against-the-wall kind of hard.

I am ready for a fresh start. I am ready for a nice, iron-filled running year that includes real training and real racing. Time to get back to setting PRs.

Bring it, 2015.