How to set goals for triathlon

Setting goals is a very important part of training and is of great benefit to people competing in any sport. However, if you don’t set goals properly it could become counter-productive and result in loss of motivation. In this post you will learn how to set goals effectively so they benefit your training, performance and motivation. Before we get started with the tips make sure you support this blog by following me on twitter @firstplacetri.

Learn to tell the difference between dreams and goals

Goals and dreams are two similar but different things and it is important that you can distinguish between the two. A dream is something long term that you really want to achieve at some point in your life. For example you might want to race at the ironman world championships in Hawaii. Unless you have been close to qualifying for the worlds in previous years this is a dream not a goal. This doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve it eventually but goals should be smaller shorter term things like running a certain distance in a certain time or completing a challenging race. The dream might motivate you to keep pushing for the smaller goals but you shouldn’t be thinking about training for it specifically until you are quite close to it.

Make the goal achievable

It is important that whatever goal you set is achievable as well as challenging. If a goal is not challenging there is no point in it and if goals are not achievable you will lose motivation when you repeatedly fail to reach them. When setting a goal you should ask yourself honestly “Can I achieve this goal in a reasonable amount of time”. If the answer is “no” you should choose a different goal but if it is “yes” this is a good goal and you should stick with it. The next step is to ask yourself “How long will it take me to achieve this” which leads us onto the next section:

Set an achievable time scale

It is important that you set a date that you want to achieve your goal by as it encourages you to work harder and makes the goal more specific. This deadline should be challenging but realistic. For example, if your current best time to run a 5K is 20:50 and you want to go under 20 minutes saying you want to achieve this by the end of next week would certainly be challenging but probably not realistic. However 5 years would be very realistic but not challenging. Something like 2 – 4 months would be a reasonable timescale for this goal as it is both challenging and realistic. Setting the right deadline for goals is a skill that needs developing but as a general rule the deadline should be far enough in the future that you can do some proper training but no longer than the end of the next race season.

Is your success or failure fully within your control

With all goals there are some things which will effect whether or not you achieve your goal which are out of your control. For example, you might get injured or poor weather on race day might slow you down. The trick is to choose a goal where your success or failure is in your control as much as possible. This is why goals such as coming first in a particular race are not very good goals as you can’t control whether or not someone faster than you turns up on the day and wins. You might have your best race ever but still come second because someone else had an even better race and therefore fail to achieve your goal. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to win races it just means that your result (as in place) shouldn’t decide whether or not you have had a successful season.

Thanks for reading this post on firstplacetri please leave a comment below telling me what you thought of this post or if you would like me to write a post on any particular topic. Remember to follow me on twitter @firstplacetri and keep training to reach your tri goals.