Given the time of year, we’ve been speaking often recently about goal setting. In Coach Erin’s talk about setting SMART goals, she mentioned that one of the most important aspects of a goal is that it’s measurable- we can know when we’ve succeeded or failed.
You might find in certain area of your life, be it work, or family, or even some areas of fitness, it may be hard to set goals like this. There’s no black and white metrics of whether we’ve succeeded or failed with some goals. Not every goal will be able to be measured.
But as I was thinking about this, it made me think about how awesome endurance sports are for teaching someone how to properly set goals. Endurance sports are extremely attractive to many goal-minded people. People who want to make sure at the end of the day whether they achieved the goal or not.
In endurance sports, at the end of the day, there’s no judge giving you a score. There’s just a clock. You put in the time to reach a certain goal measured by that clock. Whatever that clock says at the end is exactly that- whether you reached your goal or not.
I have a hard time working out just to work out. I need certain goals, and racing does that for me. I can say on a specific date, I want to run a certain time or bike a certain time. On that day, I will know exactly whether I achieved that goal or not. When I do achieve the goal, it’s an awesome feeling, because there’s no question- I achieved my goal!
If you’re a goal minded person, I encourage you to consider endurance sports if you haven’t already. Consider this awesome classification of sports that will allow you to set and measure goals with a simple stopwatch. In the end, it will be clear whether or not you’ve reached your goal.
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