The final aspect of the "mental game" I'd
like to address is goal-setting. Any
sports psychologist will tell you that setting the right goals are important to
getting the right mental approach, but I'm hesitant to endorse this idea
wholeheartedly.
However, I do have to be a pragmatist. Maybe in an ideal world you wouldn't have any
goals other than "do your best," but that's just not realistic. Runners have times they want to hit, places
they want to finish, and championships they want to qualify for. Even in workouts, you probably have goals or
desires—you know you're supposed to be
running 33.x for these 200s, but it'd be great if you could squeeze it into the
32s for the last few, right?
Goals and desires are inevitable, and in almost
all cases, they're a huge part of what motivates a competitive runner to
train. Whether it's a five-minute mile
that motivates you or a spot at the USA Track and Field Championships, goals
are an inevitable part of running.
Instead of the "high but achievable
goals" mantra of sports psychology, I have had better success with a
different approach, namely, setting two parallel
goals, a "floor" goal and a "ceiling" goal.
Floor and Ceiling Goals
The floor goal is a basic marker of what you are sure you can run, even if conditions end
up being less than optimal. It should be
a time (or place) that all of your workouts have indicated is definitely within
your grasp. The floor goal functions as
a reminder that not every race is
going to be your greatest race ever, even though you'd often like it to be. The floor goal should be challenging enough
so that it'd take an honest effort to run, but low enough such that failing to hit your floor goal indicates
a significant problem in your training approach or racing strategy.
The ceiling goal is the one most runners have when
they dream up a target to aim for. The
ceiling goal asks, "If everything goes near-perfect
and I have a great race, what do I legitimately think I could
run?"Ceiling goals are helpful because they can provide pacing
guidelines. If your ceiling goal is to
run a 9:00 3200m, you definitely shouldn't come through 800m any faster than
2:15 or so. This, along with motivation,
is the function of the ceiling goal.
To walk through a simple example, let's say you're
a high school sophomore just starting out your track season. As a freshman, you ran 5:20 in the mile, and
this fall, you ran 17:30 for 5k XC. In
your first track meet, an intersquad time-trial, you run 4:54 and felt like you
could have gone faster. Two weeks later,
you have your first real meet. How
should you structure your floor and ceiling goals?