Getting Ready for 2007

Goal-setting is an interesting exercise. If you set your goals really low, I suppose you could say you are successful when you achieve them. But are you really? And if you set them too high you might as well call them “dreams”, because you’re never going to reach them. It would seem that somewhere in-between, there is a happy median that pushes you to be much better than you are, while still providing a realistic shot at achieving them.

I fell short of my 2006 goal of 140’ in discus by 5’ 1”, but I don’t think it was an unrealistic goal. This is because I regularly threw 140’ during practice. So my “failure” wasn’t so much one of ability, as it was one of consistency. Back when I set my 2006 goal I also set a 2007 goal of 150’. Because I had such a good chance of making this year’s goal, and because I actually had one practice throw this year over 150’, I’m going to stick with 150’ as my 2007 discus goal. I’ve just got a feeling that I have some 150’ throws in me waiting to get out. I’m going to need to get a bit stronger in the off-season in order to do it, but I think there is a good chance I can get there.

Prior to this season I set goals for the Hammer Throw for 2006 and 2007 at 150’ and 160’, respectively. Unlike discus however, I missed my 2006 Hammer goal by a wide margin (over 21’), and never even came close to reaching it in practice. Should I go back and revise my 2007 goal downward? I probably would if I were a seasoned hammer thrower, but I am so new at Hammer that I believe I can still make the big gains you often see when people first begin learning an event. The other reason I’m not willing to revise my goal downward is that I just did not give the event very much practice time at all this year. Now that I’ve given up Shot Put and Javelin I’ll have more time (and energy) for Hammer practice, I think 160’ can definitely happen.

So now I need to identify specific things that are standing between me and these goals, and develop plans for overcoming each of them. So next time I’ll be developing a training plan.