In this second article about triathlon goal setting Luke Watson breaks goals down into different types so that you can use them to effectively power your triathlon and ironman training AND your performance on race day.  Outcome goals are what you want to achieve, performance goals are what you want to do in the race and process goals are what you need to do in training. Enjoy and see how you can apply this to your training to make you faster. 

You can read Being Smart about Triathlon Goal Setting here.

Last time I covered the basics of setting effective ‘SMART’ goals. Now the question is; how do you apply these principles to your main race this year?

Plan for Success

When creating a plan, whether it’s for next season’s races, or for the next 5 years, you should always start with the longest term aim – ‘the ultimate goal’ and work backwards to create the building blocks to achieve that goal. I divide my goals into 3 categories, which form a pyramid leading to my ultimate goal. The three categories, from longest to shortest term, are OUTCOME, PERFORMANCE & PROCESS. Proper understanding and application of these three categories, using the SMART principles identified previously, can be the crucial difference between achieving your goals and failure. It helps you to understand what you are trying to achieve and how, as well as giving you significant markers along the way to measure progress and help you remain on track. Let me explain a little more about the categories, and then I will use an example of one of my goals for 2012 to illustrate them. 

Outcome Goals

This type of goal is focused on the end result, or outcome of an event, and is the highest level – the pinnacle of the pyramid. For example, your goal might be “to qualify for the Ironman World Championship by finishing in the top-5 in my age-group at Ironman UK”. However, this type of goal is not directly within your control, since even if you have a perfect race, and perform the best you can, there may be 5 people who are simply better than you are, so you finish sixth. Does that mean you are a failure because you didn’t achieve your goal? Not at all! 

Mike Ricci recommends not to set Outcome goals for this very reason and makes some great points regarding SMART goal setting, although I’m inclined to disagree with him on this one and say that Outcome goals are not completely useless; far from it! They are extremely important in that they give you something tangible and meaningful to strive for – I’m sure Alistair Brownlee wakes up every day with the goal of winning gold in London this year, but then so does his brother and so does Javier Gomez and Simon Whitfield. But only one person can win, and the rest won’t be failures because of it. With outcome goals you must learn to accept that sometimes there’s nothing more you can do about them. This is not an easy thing to do, by any means: as triathletes we are usually very focused and systematic, so spend hours, days even weeks analysing a race and asking ‘what if I’d done this or that differently?’ Sometimes you just have to let it go…

It’s that combination of controlling the controllables, and having the right uncontrollable circumstances on the day, that makes these the pinnacle of the goals pyramid.

Jan Frodeno wins Beijing 2008 Olympic Triathlon Gold. Photo: en.beijing2008.cn

Performance Goals

This type of goal is the next level of the goals pyramid. Performance Goals are within your control as an athlete and define the level at which you need to compete (to the best of your knowledge) to achieve your Outcome Goals. To define a performance goal you could look at the standard required in previous years at your target race, or compare your times to your main rivals if you know who they are. Remember though, to keep the ‘A’ in mind and make sure your goals are always Achievable! You can set performance goals for the overall race, as well as each individual discipline, and at several waypoints leading up to the race. I will show you how later on. The important thing with Performance Goals is that, should you achieve them in your race, by definition the race was successful, whether or not you also achieve your Outcome Goals.

Process Goals

These are the foundation of the pyramid, and as with every construction, without the foundations the rest of your goals will crumble around you. These are the things you will do on a day-to-day basis that will lead to achieving your Performance Goals, which in turn will lead to your Outcome Goals. You can set process goals for every aspect of triathlon; swimming, cycling, running, transitions, nutrition, recovery, sleep, injury prevention, work/life balance etc etc – the list is essentially endless! However, it is obviously impossible to write goals to cover every single area and eventuality (and if you can, you need to spend more time training and less time writing plans!), so you need to focus on a few key areas that you have identified as needing improvement or that are critical to achieving your Performance goals. The important thing for Process Goals is that they are short-term, as opposed to the long-term Outcome Goals, and mid-term Performance Goals. You get a real sense of constant progress and achievement as you tick off these goals, which helps to maintain motivation and commitment to the overall plan. Remember to set up each of the Process Goals in a SMART structure, as discussed previously.

Tony Kanaan achieves his goal of finishing Ironman Hawaii. Photo tonykanaan.com.br

Example Goal Structure

I will briefly illustrate each of the above types of goal using one of my own for the 2012 season, which I set at the end of last year. My Outcome Goal (the top of the pyramid) is: “To win an individual medal at the BUCS (British Universities) Sprint Triathlon Championships in May”. This goal meets all the SMART criteria, since it is clearly specific (I have stated the race), measurable (whether I win a medal) and relevant (it is a championship event). It is also time-related (May) and achievable (I finished 4^th in the same event in 2010 and won the Duathlon championship in November 2011).

Now I need to derive some process goals. From looking at previous results (this race is good in that respect because it is held on the same course every year, so it is easy to compare), I can see that if I swim around 8:45-9:00 for the 750m, cycle 38-39min for the bike leg and then run less than 17:00 off the bike for 5k then I should be in contention for a medal. This sets my performance goals for the race, so if I achieve them and still get beaten by three people then I must still be satisfied with my performance – that is the definition of the difference between Performance and Outcome Goals. I can also set performance targets at specific points leading up to the race. For example, to run sub-17:00 off the bike, I would need to be able to run around 15:30 for a fresh 5k, so I could target 16:30 in November, 16:00 in February and 15:30 in April, and enter races accordingly to check my progress. The same applies to the swimming and cycling.

Finally, I need to set up some Process Goals, the building blocks of my Performance. As I said before, there are many hundreds of possible combinations of Process Goals, so I will just list a few here.

• Between October and December I need to build aerobic fitness, so a Process Goal could be to average per week of running for those three months.

• To cope with this run mileage I need to be conscious of injury prevention, so I will schedule two gym sessions per week as well as committing to 15mins of stretching & exercises every day. 

• To manage the training volume for all three disciplines, I need to ensure I get adequate sleep, so my goal is a minimum of 7hrs per night.

• To help recovery between hard sessions I will make sure I take in food within 30mins of finishing the session.

• I need to cover each of the different physiological systems with my training, so I will schedule one VO2 and one threshold session as well as a long run every week.

Last year I achieved one of my main goals when I won the BUCS (British Universities) Duathlon. Photo: Doug Hall (tridougie.com)