What’s in a goal?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve accomplished the goal I have been driving for since I signed up for my first Ironman in September of 2004. At the time I set the goal, I thought it would be easy.

As I learned at Ironman Wisconsin in September 2005, it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take a lot of hard work, sacrifice and support from my wife. Looking back I’m glad it happened this way, I appreciate the enormity of what I’ve accomplished more then I would have if I had made it at my first Ironman. How do I know this? I look at some of the other goals and/or major acheivements I’ve accomplished in my life and the ones that came easily I didn’t value. Chances are had I qualified for Kona on the first try, I would enjoy this sport nearly as much as I do now.

But now I’ve reached a point, nearly 3 years later and I have achieved my goal. That leaves me in a different position then I’m used to – I’ve only truly achieved a goal of this stature once or twice in my life – as I generally set my goals rather high and end up [happily] falling just shy of the goal. Although those goals were typically short term (i.e. Current Swim season) goals, not a long term 3-5 year goal that I just chipped away at.

Anyways, what do I set as a goal for the next 3-5 year triathlon goal? To be honest I have dozens of ideas, but I’m having a hard time settling on one, mostly because of a post by Gordo a while back. The jist of the post is that by setting a clear cut completely objective goal of “I want to do an Ironman in X:XX” we will in a way place an artificial cap on our ability to achieve. I’m particularly fond of how he stated it

“So, my experience is that aiming for our highest potential will ALWAYS sell ourselves short, because we sell ourselves short.”

Hard to imagine that in trying to do ourselves a favor by setting a goal, we are in reality placing a limiting factor on our performance by defining what fast means to us at a given point of time.

Time to take a deep breath…

So what do I set as a goal? To be honest I have no idea, and in a way I’m scared to. I’m scared of selling myself short, scared of setting an unobtainable goal, scared to set a goal others will call me crasy for setting.

Who would have thought that crossing a long term goal off your top ten list would cause such a crazy dilemma?

Well I’ve got to head off to a meeting at work. Perhaps when I get back my head will have cleared a bit to reason something out!