CHANGING THE GOAL POSTS PART 2

This post could be written a couple of different ways - like a big beat myself up session or as a constructive assessment of where I'm at with a plan on moving forward, interspersed with some dreams and longer term goals delivered with a good dose of level headed reality. I'll see if I can chuck in a funny or two as well :-)

So in the spirit of my glass being half full, I shall stay positive but be honest and objective about my situation.

Now that the race pressure is off I'm thinking a lot more clearly and logically about "where to and what do I want". Over the last few weeks I somehow managed to dig myself a nice big hole and work solidly at burying myself in it. The more pressure I felt, the worse my behaviours were and my running suffered leaving me feeling worse, eating more, running worse and feeling under more and more pressure. Is that what you call a negative spiral?

The fact is that I havent put the necessary effort into managing my injury. That will change starting with some small adjustments right now. I know that it will be a three pronged management strategy and two of those prongs are totally within my control. (More on this might be a Part 3) You could call this the start of the positive spiral.

How I approach this is crucially important too. I started the year really well with lots of motivation to make this the year I achieved some big things. I'm not sure where the wheels fell off but they did and with almost 1/3 of the year gone I havent achieved much greatness at all. But enough dwelling on the past and more looking to the future. I need to have a balanced and moderate approach to improving my back health and fitness and putting myself under huge pressures will likely be counter-productive. Finally common sense is prevailing.

So here is a little snapshot of what I'm working towards over the coming weeks / months. These are not "goals" as such because my recently declared goals were all crap anyway. I'll leave the traditional goal-setting for another time.

1. Run the 10kms in the Greenbelt and all being good on the day, do it in sub 70. (Ok this is a goal.)

2. Get my injury under control. Parts 1 & 2 I'll take care of and then hopefully my physio can pull something clever from her bag of tricks to address part 3. I'll write more about this in the coming weeks.

3. In early July we are holidaying in Singapore again. This time I want to be feeling fit and great when I go. I have a bikini and I plan to wear it and not feel like Greenpeace will come and try to push me back into the water.

4. And longer term I have a dream of reaching the big FIVE O looking and feeling FABULOUS. Not just ok for my age or pretty good but FABULOUS!! I have a few years to achieve this and quite frankly it wont be an overnight thing but it means a lot to me to age well. Yes I am vain but nobody can deny that you feel better when you know you look better.

M