How Often "Should" You Reach Your Goals?

People ask me if I am getting excited for the 24 hour world championships in Italy. I keep saying, "yes and no." Yes, I am excited to be on my first team USA. I am excited to have a partially expense paid trip to a foreign country to do an event that I happen to be rather good at. However, every day that goes by with this injury, and thus me not able to train as hard as I would like just over six weeks away from the competition, I get nervous that it could go very poorly. I may not reach my goals for this race, any of them.

This brings up a good question, how often should one reach his or her goals?

I think it was Alberto Salazar or Jerry Schumacher, both Nike coaches, that said the goals should be achievable about 50% of the time. If you are reaching goals 100% of the time, you're not aiming high enough. And if you never reach your goals, you aren't being realistic. I could easily say, 50%, that's a good target, but I'm not sure that it is right for everyone. The more difficult the goals, the less frequently they will be met.

I feel I should be totally happy. I am representing the USA at an international event. How many people ever do that, 1%? Maybe only 0.1%? Maybe even less? Yet I can't help but be dissapointed that my build up is not giving me the confidence to reach more of my goals at the world championships.

Motivation is a finicky thing. It may be the basis of long term health as related to athletics and hard training, yet without those other two, motivation can diminish. This blog is a great thing for me. I can whine and complain all I want, and no one has to read it, yet I feel like I have expressed myself. One of my three major running goals was to be on team USA, and it has happened! And yet I am not satisfied.

"For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." - James 3:16

I don't understand most things. What did I do wrong or differently this training cycle to get this new injury? What lesson, or lessons, do I need to learn from this experience? I did not get to the place of honor and priviledge that I am in alone, and I will not reach "my" goals alone either. Sometimes when I think of goals, mine or others (and Lance Armstrong is good example here), I wonder how that goal helps anyone. I hope to help inspire people and motivate them to get off the couch and move around a little. I hope to be an example of nothing being impossible. Perhaps I already am, although I don't feel like it. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I have no idea how the world championships will go, I may very well get last place. The little I do know, I am extraordinarily blessed, I do not deserve all of the great and wonderful things that happen to me, and regardless of the outcome in Italy, it is a priviledge and honor just to go.