Goal Setting

Decide on Your Goals
I went to a course on sports psychology a few years ago and one of the first things we were asked to think about on the course was what we wanted to get out of our sport. It's definitely a valid reason to choose to go orienteering to get out of the house at the weekend (or on a Wednesday if you're a fan of the army events) and do some exercise in nice countryside. However, if that's your aim then you shouldn't worry if you don't do very well at any of the events. This was the main thrust of the first session of the course:

• Know what you want and don't worry about not achieving the things that you don't want
• When you know what you want focus on how you are going to get it
  
• Don't worry about things that are out of your control

Good goals should be achievable, but require some effort to attain them, and should be measurable. Ideally they should be influenced only by your own performance, so beating Charlie Richardson in the RR10s (one of my goals for this year!) is a particularly good example of a bad goal as it depended quite significantly on how fast Charlie was running (generally faster than me!).

Some good examples might be to lose less than 5 minutes to mistakes on 90% of the courses that you run; to get a championship, gold or silver standard in 2007; to get three or more colour-coded standards on the course that you usually run; to be in the top 10% at the British Championships or JK; to improve your running speed over a set distance or a set route that you often run.

When you have set your goal, it is often very easy to see how to achieve it. It also means that you will generally be happier. For example, if achieve your goal of losing less than 5 minutes on a course, you will probably be less worried about being beaten by a close rival.

My goal is to write more on the blog: achievable, will require some effort and depends only on me!

Christine