Process Goals

My life-long friend P__ once explained to me the seemingly chaotic hockey offensive strategy: "Hockey is about setting yourself up to get lucky." To what in life does that not apply? Let's try mid-distance running:

I have a goal of 1:XX in the National Half Marathon tomorrow. When will that goal be accomplished? When I take the last step and look at the clock, of course. But if I'm not on track after the second-to-last step, can I make up the lost time? Not likely. So the second-to-last step is only marginally less important. The same, of course, for the third-to last. It's daunting to contemplate the 15,370 steps I can expect to take tomorrow and think that no one of them can accomplish my goal. All have to be within the margin of error. For that reason, I can't reasonably wrap my mind around a goal of running 1:XX. I need something else to shoot for. Something intermediate. Something that, once accomplished, will set me up to get lucky.

A few of the intermediate steps are quite mundane. I need to eat right tonight and tomorrow. Low fiber but high calorie tonight, and a banana, an english muffin, a cup of coffee and a gel pack tomorrow morning. I need to get to the start line early -- none of this rolling up as the gun goes off, like my 5K with P__ (different P) last week. I need to jog around a little to loosen up, run in place to get the heart rate up and do a few 20-stride sprints to get the feel of moving. Having done all that, I'll be about as ready as I can be

Then the most important one for me. I need a good first mile. Not a fast first mile. In my last (and only other) pure half-marathon, I checked my watch one mile in, and found 5:55 had elapsed and I was running with a small pack of front runners. I spent the next 12.1 miles trying to regain my breath. It's one thing to do that at age 27. I might not finish if I tried it tomorrow. A good first mile means hitting my target pace. After that, when I cease paying attention down the road, the start-line adrenaline will be dissipated and there will be no danger of my doing anything too outlandish.

Beyond that? I need nutrition, which means gel at the start, mile 4 and mile 8. I need water, pretty much whenever they'll give it to me. I need to understand after the first seven miles, which will be easy, that this is a race and what I do in the coming 6.1 miles, which will be hard, will help to define what I do the next time.

If I do all those things I will be set up to be lucky. If I then get to the third-to-last step and I realize I can't make up the difference from the 15,367 that have elapsed, I need to be OK with that.