“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Envisioning the future can be a difficult obstacle.  We don’t know what the future holds, and we shouldn’t plan every minute of our lives.  At the same time, we should believe in the future to achieve our goals we set before ourselves.  Goals without plans are dreams.  To live our best lives, we ought to make our dreams a part of our reality by seeing them to success.

Setting the stage for a comeback journey hasn’t been easy. Hsu and colleagues describe it best: “Physical and psychological return to sports do not always coincide, even when physical impairments are resolved.” ¹ Let me put this into context for you. Earlier this year, I had a promising fall season planned, with two more marathons on the docket, before my life came crashing down. Now being in the midst of the fall marathon season, I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster despite physically feeling so much better than I’ve been over the last few months. Why such a roller coaster? Recovery life is grueling, long, and boring. The days and weeks run together and time on the clock ticks at its slowest rate ever. Sometimes you feel like there is no end in sight. You yearn to be back at doing what you want to do. However, the human body ultimately has no timeline for healing. How do we know that the body is healed? Simply put, we don’t know and repeat imaging isn’t without its cost-benefits ratio to consider as well as specificity and sensitivity of the testing. Couple that with the fact that “individuals who previously sustained a bone stress injury have nearly a fivefold higher risk of sustaining a future bone stress injury compared with those with no history,” means that return to training before return to sport is a daunting task. ²

How do we get our minds ready for the future so that it matches our physical readiness?  Hsu and colleagues recommend a few interventions that I’ve found fairly helpful, which include social support, self-talk, education, and goal-setting.  In terms of education, I’ve held myself accountable for learning everything and anything I possibly can about bone stress injuries, learning about the science of running, and reflecting upon my past on how I suffered my first (and hopefully last) major running-related injury.  My weekend warrior adventures no longer include running ruthless mileage but instead I have included webinar weekends and relaxing reading while resting in my nest.  In terms of goal-setting, this has been challenging to say the least, but let’s dive into goals deeper because they are the foundation of our future.

An old but worthy paper by Weinberg suggests that “one important source of self-motivation is goal-setting.” ³ Think about that for a moment.  Why do you set your future goals?  You don’t set them to impress others, but you set them to impress yourself.  “Goals operate largely through internal comparison processes and internal standards.” ³ Motivation and commitment see our goals to successful completion.  When one of these two variables is missing, goal attainment is much more difficult, although not impossible.

When I recently sat down to put together my comeback journey, I had a difficult time coming up with anything meaningful in my eyes. I felt like a kid with a pencil and that gigantic eraser, constantly erasing and ripping the thoughts out of my mind. My training journal was left blank. Frustrated and annoyed, getting away to unplug and live for the moment has been my coping strategy. In turns out, this actually is the secret to living a more meaningful life. By slowing down and appreciating the moments of today, we learn there is so much more to life to celebrate. And when it comes back to focusing on the future, thoughts flow more freely, and goal-setting becomes easier.

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Before you begin your goal-setting adventure, I recommend reading a well-known article by Locke and Latham about goal-setting in sports.⁴  If you want to push your performance to the next level, you have to outline your goals to develop a plan on how you will get there.

“Set specific, quantitative goals.” ⁴

Don’t just say that you will do your best.  Making a specific goal with a timeline will actually increase your performance output.

“The higher the goal, the higher the performance.” ⁴

Your goals should be just outside your comfort zone but not so far away that you will fail.  They should excite you but also scare you.  They should test you but not break you.

“Short term goals are used as a means of attaining long term goals.” ⁴

You can’t reach the finish line of your race if you don’t have training goals along the way. It’s important that these training goals place a big emphasis on “supporting sessions” ⁵ which are recovery time, resting time, and cross-training time. I came across this phrase while reading Peak Performance and it’s such a great way to view “non-running days” in an optimistic way instead of a pessimistic way.

“Goals must be accepted to be effective.” ⁴

Part of this fundamental principle is to accept your reality where you are.  For me, I have to accept the reality that I will be starting at baseline zero. We have to embrace easier goals before we can go after the goals that make us most hungry for success.

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Finally, two additional principles that I’ll add to the goal-setting picture that have been helpful to me in the past are the following:

Goals are unique.

As unique individuals, we don’t need the same goal as our peers. We need to stop comparing our performances on Strava and Garmin. We need to unplug from those apps publicly. We need to realize that everyone has individual goals for their own life. We need to be supportive of each other’s goals, acknowledging successes and uplifting failures. You don’t really know all of the obstacles someone is facing by their performance metrics, but supporting them along the way will instill self-confidence in helping them to have greater output in achieving their goals.

Take your goal, read it, write it, eat it, and commit to it.

The more you believe in your goals, the more your goals will become reality.  Turn off the noise of the doubters, the comparators, the challengers, the fear ravagers – some of which are internal and some of which are external.  Use these as fuel to your fire in believing in yourself.  Write your goal down in a million places that you walk by every day – the bathroom, the hallway, in your vehicle, in your lunch tote, and in your training environment.  To believe in your goal is one thing but to envision reaching your goal is the key to success.

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As I wrap up this post, you might be left wondering where exactly I am on my goal-setting adventure?  The cloudy crystal ball that I threw to the ground a few times and in the trash a few times is the same crystal ball that my husband picked back up for me too many times.  I finally wiped it a little clean with the tissue from my watery eyes.  The roller coaster of emotions brings me to the starting line of my 2022 comeback journey, with a short-term spring goal on my way to a long-term fall goal that I’ve written down.  I truly look forward to all of the “supporting sessions” that will accompany their training more than I ever have before. I will never despise rest like I did in the past.

This time, things will be slower, but smarter.  Things will be redundant, but less ruthless.  Things will be different, but challenging.  Things will be harder, but smarter.  “Remember that attitudes often follow behaviors; sometimes the best thing that you can do is simply get started.” ⁵  It’s almost time to re-energize and rise, as I finish topping off my energy reserves.

Get ready, because the comeback journey is about to lift off.

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1. Hsu CJ, Meierbachtol A, George SZ, Chmielewski TL. Fear of reinjury in athletes. Sports Health. 2017 Mar/Apr;9(2):162-167.
   
2. Rudolph SE, Caksa S, Gehman S, Garrahan M, Hughes JM, Tenforde, AS, Ackerman KE, Bobxsein ML, Popp KL. Physical activity, menstrual history, and bone microarchitecture in female athletes with multiple bone stress injuries. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2021 Oct 1;53(10):2182-2189.
   
3. Weinberg RS. Goal setting and performance in sport and exercise settings: a synthesis and critique. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1994 Apr;26(4):469-77.
   
4. Locke EA, Latham GP.  The application of goal-setting to sports. J Sport Psychol. 1985;7:205-222.
   
5. Stulberg B, Magness S. Peak performance: elevate your game, avoid burnout, and thrive with the new science of success. New York (NY): Rodale; 2017. 230 p.