I know I'm a few days late to the party declaring my goals for the month, but I've been having a hard time figuring out what they should be.


Not planning to go sub-2 anytime soon

I mean how exactly are you supposed to set realistic, but still challenging goals, while you're still in recovery mode. I debated for a while if I should even be setting any goals at all, or if that would just set me up for overdoing it and put me at a bigger risk for reinjury.

I went back and forth on it for a while, but ultimately, I decided without some sort of goals, my workouts have no real meaning or purpose, which makes me much more likely to skip them. It's why I function so well when I'm training for races. With an end goal in mind, I'm way more motivated to get out the door and get my workouts in.



So when I was thinking about goals for November, I wanted to find something challenging enough that I have to work a bit to accomplish it, but not too much of a reach that I re-injure myself trying to get there.

And so this is what I decided on:

My goal for the month of November is to run for 360 minutes.

How did I get that number?

Well I started with what I wanted to do each week. My goal on a weekly basis is to average three 30-minute runs. Ideally no one run will be much longer or much shorter than 30 minutes, but if I'm feeling pain one day, I will stop my run early and make up the additional minutes on another run when things feel better.



In total, I should be running 90 minutes each week, and since there are 4 full weeks in November, that adds up to 360 minutes for the month.

Why is my goal in minutes and not miles?

As I'm coming back from injury, my times have been a lot slower than what I'm used to. If I focused on miles, it would take me a longer time to cover a set distance than I should be out running at this point. By focusing on running a certain number of minutes, I control the total amount of time I'm on my feet.

Plus, I'm hoping that by focusing on the minutes and not the miles, I will get less frustrated with how slow I am going. Right now I'm barely finishing three miles in 30 minutes. That's a lot slower than I used to be and so I'm hoping by eliminating any concern about the distances I'm running in November, I will avoid unnecessary frustration at my progress.

What are your goals for this month?