Aligning Your Competitive Goals With a Healthy, Balanced Lifestyle

The exponential increase in popularity of ultra-endurance events like marathons and ironman triathlons in recent years has made them fixtures in mainstream culture, instead of oddball events for freaks. Commercialization and media attention have created a mystique and powerful global brands that compel many to overlook the question of whether these events represent sensible athletic goals. The truth is that completing a marathon or long distance triathlon is a massive physical challenge that is difficult to align with healthy, balanced lifestyle for most people. It's essential to pursue sensible event goals based on your levels of athletic experience and natural ability, time available, energy, motivation, general physical condition and health, potential impact on family and other broad life priorities.

As it stands now, only a small portion of the professional field legitimately race an ironman or marathon, while the rest struggle to survive and drag their depleted bodies across the finish line. Sure, they is plenty of value to just finishing a daunting goal, as evidenced by the amazing outpouring of passion and emotion we see every year in my hometown of Auburn, the finish line for the truly extreme Western States 100-mile run across the Sierra. However, when media and corporate influences lure you to believe that ultra distance endurance events represent the ultimate athletic achievement, you are pushed into a backwards approach to your goals -- squeezing your lifestyle into a 26.2 mile box. Aspiring to a less challenging event that requires less training time and less physical stress might be a win/win situation all around.
For example, look at the sensibility of my kid's soccer league. As the age divisions rise, the field size, game time and number of players increase accordingly. If instead under-6 kids played on a 110-yard field for 90 minutes, they would probably become exhausted and burnt out, something that happens with alarming frequency in the world of amateur marathon runners and ironman triathletes.

Let me be clear that I am just as inspired as the next person watching these brave amateur and professional athletes battle their competition, the elements and themselves to accomplish amazing endurance feats on the race course. I am simply suggesting that you stay in control with your athletic goals instead of blindly following the pack, staying up till midnight to pounce on the opening of online registration of that must-do race. Training for an ironman might be a little crazy any way you slice it, but if you take extended time off in the winter, make a pact with your loved ones that you are going to pursue only one ironman race per year, or only one every other year, or only race for two more years--whatever is appropriate--and you can maintain long-term perspective, sensibility and balance.

Athletes who succumb to these cultural pressures will plug along with their competitive goals despite bad vibes, bad bodies and bad lifestyle circumstances. Just because you have trained all year, spent a few grand and a bunch of vacation time to get to the race, doesn't mean that you should race with a 102 degree fever or a herniated disc or at risk of becoming emotionally and physically disconnected with your teenager. Let us never forget that endurance training and competition is supposed to nurture good health and well being, not compromise it.

To facilitate healthy goal setting, make a priority list of your life goals and responsibilities and ask yourself where your athletic goals land on the list. Estimate the average amount of time you have to devote to endurance training each week and match your goals against these guidelines:
a. More than 10 hours--half and full ironman distance triathlons are within reason
b. 5-10 hours--marathon and limited half-ironman triathlons are within reason
c. 2-5 hours--Olympic distance triathlon (1.5k-40k-10k) and half-marathon run are within reason
d. Less than 2 hours--10k running race or sprint triathlon are within reason

Finally, always be open to possibility of adjusting your goals based on life variables to ensure that you always protect your energy level, motivation level and general health.