Goals.....What Goals?

I went to a nutritional seminar offered by Warrior Fit this morning (which is a whole other story....) and the topic of goals was addressed.  What are your goals?  What do you want to accomplish?

Ugh.  Goals.

I'm always so torn with goals.  They used to be easy.  I want to lose "x" amount of pounds.  Work your bum off and bam...done.  Next goal, lose "x" amount of pounds.  Repeat.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about losing weight.  My goals morphed into running a 5k, then a 10k, a half marathon, a Warrior Dash, a Tough Mudder.

All were admirable goals, but now, I don't know what I want.

Actually, that's a lie.

I want to lose weight.  But I want to train like a bad-ass and lift like a man.  But I want to work on my endurance running-wise.

Long story short (and something I've kinda-sorta known for a while) is that it is very difficult to do all that at once.  Distance running requires a different kind of eating compared to strength training (for muscle mass gains) compared to losing weight.

So, I think I've just avoided making goals.  Then it becomes a non-issue.

But being aimless sucks.

After the whole nutritional seminar thing, and after talking my thoughts out with some very good friends, I think I might have an inkling of a game plan.  Of course, I'm going to discuss it with trainer Frank, and see what his opinions of it are, but at least it is a start.

For now, I'm going to focus on strength.  My knee is feeling better, we're bringing more legwork into the mix, and I want to lift some heavy stuff.  While I'm working on the heavier lifting, I'm also going to focus on a 5k at the end of May.

I know, I know.....here I am, mixing the lifting with running.  But trust me, there is a method to my madness.

In my mind, a 5k isn't a real endurance distance.  It is roughly a half hour of running.  Which is a perfectly acceptable, normal cardio session.  I'm going to focus on getting my time for the 5k below 30 minutes, which isn't even terribly fast.  I'll incorporate more intervals of varying intensities for 30 minutes, instead of focusing on distance.

I feel like this type of running....short, intense bursts, will be much easier to fuel for while I'm working on lifting heavier.

After the 5k, my focus will change.  I have a goal of running a half marathon sometime in the fall.  I'll start training for that during the summer.  (Hear that, Kimberly and Melissa?  Early morning running!)  Instead of lifting heavy at Death Gym, I'll switch to more interval-style workouts....keeping the heart rate up, but also involving some weights while increasing agility.

I'm realizing that if I want progress, I have to get back to setting real, concrete, definable goals.  Goal #1 is lift heavy and run a 5k at the end of May in under 30 minutes.  I'm hoping I can do some kind of eval with trainer Frank to see where I am strength-wise, so I can measure my progress in May.  Goal #2 is to run a half marathon in the fall.  (Time-specific goals on that will be evaluated after my 5k.)

So....what kind of fun and exciting goals are in store for you?