Struggling With Goals

I find setting personal goals challenging. While they help to keep me motivated, putting them on paper also works to eventually highlight my many little failures.

With this year's running schedule, I am attempting brief three month training windows. Ramps that take me to some adequate level of performance in time for some "A" race. The race will happen and then a new window opens. The obstruction I find is that I haven't yet figured out how to bake my life into these goals. How do I plan my sometimes hectic life into this rigid structure that will get me to some peak performance so that I can walk/limp away from a race satisfied with my result?

Do I plan in my weekly running schedule for a known early morning Wednesday meeting that will not only eat into my Wednesday pre-dawn run, but will eat away at me with stress all through the Tuesday before? The short answer is that I currently do not. Then I toss and turn through a few hours of sleep on Tuesday night. When the alarm beeps at 4:30 am the next morning, I push it away and decide that it would better for my health to get another hour of sleep. Then I spend the day in regret.

I have not found a way through this struggle. Not yet. And honestly, I'm not sure how to look for the answers.

It gets tougher with a recent move. While I am happy to have the family in more relaxing and greener environs, the payment for this comes in the form of a longer commute. Add to this the exciting upcoming addition to my family, and these goals push further and further down the priority lists.

One recent ray of light on all this has been the invitation from Altra to join a bunch of talented athletes in their Ambassador program. Being able to listen in and share with the team our daily activities and thoughts provides the inspiration for me to push a little harder... to keep moving my line of limit a little further out into the distance.

Now it's about taking the successes where and when I can. I push harder, and try to work smarter. If I have to miss a day, I stubbornly push on. Eventually, I will get it figured out.