Duh

The theme for this week's Take It and Run Thursday is "It was so obvious!"

Well here's one:

If you set goals for yourself, you will be a better runner.

That's right, Internet. I recently discovered that if you try to run faster/longer/stronger, you have a considerably better chance of, in fact, becoming faster/longer/stronger.

Duh.

I have been a runner since I was about 10 years old. I ran my first 5K way back in 1985, and I am still very proud of the varsity letters I got in cross country and track in high school (because I worked my butt off to earn them). But honestly, when I'd go out and run your usual Saturday 5K race, my only thoughts would be "This is fun," "Cool t-shirt," and "I wonder what the after-party will be like."

I didn't train for anything specific, and I didn't pay much attention to my times.

But this year, I resolved to take my running to the next level. And a big part of that was setting goals for myself. Because I had goals in mind, my training was more focused. I tried harder, and paid more attention to how I was doing.

I went into my trisko training with a goal of 2:00, which was ambitious for me. My injury made me back off that goal a bit, and I honestly didn't think I'd do well, given the weather. But even without a perfect training period, my time was only five minutes off that ambitious goal.

All of this leads to the head slapping, "duh" revelation:
If I try to do something, I just might do it. Even if I don't quite make that goal, I'll do better than I would have otherwise.