Missed Goals and Personal Victories - Note From The President - June 2014

The morning of June 1st was time of missed goals and personal victories all in the same day!

A few months ago, I signed up for the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon. When I arranged the run, I hadn’t really thought about putting a goal and plan in place since I had never really trained for a 13.1 mile run. You see, I am not really a runner. I’ve done a 10k or two in the past, but I’ve just showed up and run for the benefit of a worthy cause.

After some thought, I settled on attempting to finish the Half Marathon in two hours or less. At some point during training, it seemed like my mile times would allow me to finish in 1 hour and 50 minutes, so I revised my goal to 1:50. I thought the goal was aggressive, but possible.

In order to run for the planned amount of time, nutrition and hydration are key. My plan was to eat one gel packet and drink at least 16 ounces of water per hour of run time.

We arrived in San Diego the day before the race and headed to the Health & Fitness Expo. This is where you pick up your registration packet and check out all kinds of cool gear at the vendor booths. I found a neat rub-on tattoo for my arm with mile times in giant print. This would help keep me on track during the race to achieve my goal. The problem was that the only tattoo they had was for a finish time of 1:45…five minutes faster than I’d trained for. My goal had just gotten VERY aggressive.

When race time came on June 1st, I shot out of the gate and headed for the 1:45 goal. At about 8 miles, I was ahead of my goal, but something felt wrong. As it turns out, I did not eat my gel packets and I had trouble drinking water while running. At about 10 miles in, my mile times began to slow. I knew I wouldn’t make the 1:45 time and even began wondering if I would finish at all.

At that moment, I realized that I may still be able to make 1:50. I revised the plan and became determined to finish under 1:50.

As it turns out, I finished the race in 1:48. I was very excited to meet the 1:50 goal, but I didn’t follow the nutrition plan at all. I felt successful, but I was almost sick from dehydration. I only had about three ounces of water and one gel packet.

What happened to me is actually very much like our business plans and goals. Sometimes you set your goals very aggressively, you don’t follow your original plan, and you don’t make it. If you take a step back and look at the objective realistically, you may be able to adjust without too much additional effort and still get a great outcome.

Half of the year is over – do you need to make some adjustments?

Marty