Goals

I was recently asked to write down some of my successes in life and I really struggled to do so. Anything I came up with, didn’t feel particularly genuine. I’ve thought about this a good deal and have concluded that (for some reason) I have a hard time bragging about myself - even when asked to do so.

One thing that I recognize is goals and success are related to me. For a person who doesn’t like to toot her own horn (and I do realize the importance of feeling and knowing that you are good at something), I’ve decided that setting and reaching a goal could be good way to clearly identify a success and feel comfortable acknowledging it.

On a side, yet related note, I met a pretty remarkable woman one time at a running club here in Atlanta. During our long run she shared a few glimpses into how she conducts her life. It struck me as hard core, very cool, and incredibly disciplined. Basically, she runs her personal life like a business with a set ‘business plan’. She establishes all of her goals for the year and then actually reviews where she is at each quarter. I believe she even sets aside days for meetings with herself. There’s a ton more to it than this but the whole process seemed very well thought out. It was also quite clear that she makes a concerted effort not to neglect herself which I’m sure would be super easy to do when you consider that she heads up International Human Resources at a large company AND has two young boys at home.

As part of an effort to work on some things about myself, I’ll be setting some goals (racing and non-racing related) and to get started – I’m going to set a goal right now.

This weekend I will be racing the Athleta IronGirl Lake Lanier Sprint Triathlon for the second consecutive year. While I have not trained like I did last year, here are my goals:

•  Have fun and finish
•  Match (or beat) last year’s time
• Be in the top 15%  (not a great goal because this is somewhat out of my control…)

PS: Four days until race day and my bike is still sitting in the basement from last year. I think it's time to take it out and brush off the cobwebs. Hopefully my mental game can make up for the lack of swim/bike training. More on that later...