I’ve known about SMART Goals. For years. I’ve known how important it is to follow the SMART Goals process. For years. But from time to time, for whatever reasons, I still find myself working on goals that are not SMART. And they don’t work out too well either.
I have a new goal, and it is SMART. I’m doing a 10K race on Thanksgiving Day, and I’m super excited about it! I’ve been a little bit lax the past couple of weeks on making progress towards what is evidently a not-so-SMART health and fitness goal. I’m really good about going to the gym because I have a strength training program I’m following, but running? Yeah. I haven’t been doing so good there. It’s just easier to sleep in a bit longer, skip running, and meet up with Diane to walk. I usually run before we walk, and so I told myself, “You’re walking 4 miles with Diane…that’s good enough.”
I am so good at rationalizing with myself.
One of my friends told me she’s training for a half marathon to keep her on track, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this for myself because it’s definitely worked for me in the past. I found a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot, told all of my family who will be with us at Thanksgiving about it, and I think several are going to participate too! They have a walking 5K and 10K AND a running 5K and 10K, so pretty much something for everyone. It will be awesome! And while the 5K would be easy, I knew I needed to challenge myself a bit.
And you know what? The second I sent the text about the race to my family—thereby committing myself to participate—my whole perspective changed!
✔️ My nutrition has been spot-on all week.
✔️ My running has been spot-on all week.
I put together a plan to increase my distance from what I’m currently doing (3 miles a day) to get to where I need to be by Thanksgiving Day (6.1 miles…that .1 is super important ?). This plan means I’ll have to #1 set out my running clothes the night before so that I can #2 leave to run earlier each week as my distance increases and #3 go to bed earlier so I can get up early enough to get my miles in before I meet up with Diane AND so I’m not so tired during the day AND so I’m less tempted to sleep in a bit and not be able to get all of my miles in. My night owl tendencies have been pretty strong the past couple of weeks, and that #3 is definitely going to be the hardest part of this plan.
So bright and early on Thanksgiving Day, I will be running 6.1 miles. I have a time goal in mind, and while it would be awesome to nail it, the most important thing is that I’ll have achieved this goal.
And I’ll be able to eat even more yummy Thanksgiving foods because of all those calories I’ll burn running those 6.1 miles.
Win-win!
*Image courtesy of Bing and used under their free to use and share commercially license.
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