“New Year, New Me,” most New Year resolutions would say. If you’re like many people, the clock ticking over into January 1 brings with it motivation to start a new challenge – perhaps getting into a new sport, moving up in distance or goal times, or targeting a big event.
If you’ve been doing endurance sport for some time, hopefully you kept rolling through the holiday season. But if you’re starting from zero, no worries.
You need three things to kick things off: a goal, a (training) plan, and accountability.
Goal
What is it you’re working toward? A goal is something on the horizon, which you then work backwards from to figure out what you need to get there.
In business, goals are set using the S.M.A.R.T. framework: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. But you can also use this to set your own health and fitness goals.
Let’s say you want to run a marathon this year. So you start searching for events that spark your interest so you can register and have a target race date. That makes it Specific and Time-bound. It’s Relevant to you because you want to do a marathon. It’s Measurable because a marathon is a specific distance of 42.195 kilometres.
Now, is it Achievable? Most experienced marathoners will tell you to give yourself plenty of time to build the endurance and strength to run that distance. If you’re coming from zero fitness, that could mean upwards of six months to a year; to make your marathon goal SMART, you’ll need to find a race scheduled appropriately.
Plan
These days there are many templated training plans available for whatever distance or event you can think of – our Pho3nix Club library has some great free plans for members catering to beginner, intermediate, and advance fitness levels for various triathlon distances.
Other platforms also provide plans that automatically adjust to how you’re performing during training sessions (like Garmin Coach and Humango).
And for plans that are completely customized and grow with your goals and fitness levels, there’s nothing like finding a coach who understands you as an athlete and person with a life outside of sport.
Having a plan gives you the structure you need to do the appropriate training sessions at the right times to support your physical development. Ticking these sessions off also allows you to measure your progress toward your goal and give you the boost you need to keep at it.
Accountability
If you’ve gone down the coach route with your training plan, a good coach will keep you accountable in sticking with the training and build good habits and a positive attitude.
You can also find accountability in community – a group of like-minded people with similar goals, who can ask how you’re doing and help you with what you might need to achieve your targets and goals. Joining a run club is a great step.
The first person who you need to hold you accountable is, of course, yourself. Going back to SMART, the goal you picked was Relevant to you because you wanted to achieve it, so remember your Why. In the end, the goal is yours, and in endurance sport it’s you who has to put in the time and effort and you who will have to go from start to finish. It’s also you who will receive that finisher medal and the bragging rights to achieving that goal.
So this New Year, get after it!
