Working for a goal

Yesterday was the day I had worked toward for almost half a year.

This past spring, I decided to sign up for the Lausanne Marathon 10k race. The goal was clear: This would be my main race of the year, where I wanted to set a new 10k personal best. And, as an even more ambitious goal, run my first sub 44’ 10k race.

From that day on, this was the main objective I had in all my training. I started a custom running plan in Runna, I put the goal on my /now page as my top priority, I told people in my personal environment about it. The game was on.

So, for the past 22 weeks, I have run 4 times a week, alternating between easy runs, tempo runs, interval runs, and long runs. I enjoyed most of them. One that was particularly great was a beautiful 18k long run on a sunny Saturday towards the end of the plan, where I truly savored each of the full 90+ minutes.

But there were also the days when things didn’t feel so great. Either because I just wasn’t enjoying the run, or also because the “obligation” of having to spend up to 2 hours running on an already packed day stressed me out. Especially when uni started.

But yesterday, as I was heading back home from Lausanne, I thought to myself: “This feeling of accomplishment right now makes it all worth it.” It’s an emotion that can’t be brought about consciously. A sensation that one earns by putting in the work. No matter how rainy it might be outside (insert other reasons to not go for a run here).

For those wondering, I reached my goal of setting a new personal best. And I even managed to run the race just 1.3 seconds short of 44 minutes¹. That’s what I call a precision landing. And a sign that not one second spent running in preparation for this event was wasted.

With this final race² of the year in the books, I’m now looking forward to a couple of winter months, where I can dial back my weekly milage. But I’m equally looking forward to planning my next running year, setting new goals, working towards them. And hopefully reach them.