I often feel a certain electricity in the air this time of year. It feels like Javelina’s glitter just settled, and my snow-legs are just stating to take shape, calendars are yawning open. Ambition gets loud and louder. It’s a mirror, and for many runners an invitation. We watch and wonder, could I do that next year?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. Ambition is the heartbeat of endurance sport. But the noise around us, the highlight reels, the cinematic montages, the race lotteries, the qualifiers, can make ambition feel less like an inner compass and more like a current we’re swept into. After all my years of running, I still find myself confusing momentum for meaning. We inherit goals before we have asked whether they fit the “season of life” we’re actually in.

Most goals don’t fail because people are lazy or undisciplined. If they fail, it usually is because they’re misaligned. The version of ourselves who signed up for the race isn’t the one waking up to train for it.

The “right” goal rarely announces itself. It’s built through conversation, reflection, some detective work, a few nights of sleep. The goal that stretches us, but doesn’t fracture us. Excitement alone is adrenaline, while relief alone is resignation. But when they meet, they signal alignment. Here’s a thumbnail I use, a two-feeling rule:

Excitement without relief = impulsive, relief without excitement = obligation, both = alignment.

When I work with athletes, this process usually begins in the same place: not with the race calendar, but with their life. The right goal is one that lives inside your real circumstances. It honors the time, terrain, energy, and emotional bandwidth you have. Not the fantasy of who you wish you were training like. We ask different questions: What season of life are you in? What kind of running brings you joy? Does this goal make you feel expansive or contracted? Does your body say yes when your mind does? If eyes light up and the schedule doesn’t cry, we’re usually close.

The work of choosing right
Goal setting, at its best, is an act of self-honesty. Before we talk about performance or races, we start by asking: How much space do I really have? What am I carrying (work stress, caregiving, travel, grief, recovery, health problems, or simply fatigue)? Most runners overestimate their future energy and underestimate their present constraints. I am definitely no stranger to this. In fact, I am already registered for four races in 2026. But capacity is not a moral category. It’s a fact of life. The goal isn’t to outrun your life; it’s to train within it sustainably.

Once the outline is on the table, we look at joy. The test sounds simple: What do you genuinely enjoy doing? Do you crave long, grinding climbs, or short, sharp intervals? Do you thrive in solitude, or are you fueled by community? Do you even like racing, or do you love the training, the rhythm, the quiet repetition? Is your focus only on running or do you like to have space for other sports and adventures? A goal that doesn’t excite you in its daily form is one you’ll resent really quickly. Endurance is not built through mere muscle and mitochondria, it’s built through genuine interest.

Then comes logistics. The least romantic but most revealing part. The fit test asks whether your life can actually host the training load. Do you have terrain that matches the race (and if not, do you know how to deal with that)? Can you afford the travel and days off, the gear, the recovery time? Are you prepared for the inconveniences that follow every ambitious yes? If the goal depends on rearranging your entire life, it might be more like a wish, rather than a goal.

The next check is less tangible, but as critical: nervous-system readiness. Imagine the coming training block. Does it feel like expansion (your shoulders drop, breath deepens) or contraction, a subtle tightening, a quiet dread? Will the person you become in training be someone you’d like to live with? The body knows long before the mind admits it. I’ve learned to trust that signal. A goal that expands you is one you’ll meet with curiosity. A goal that contracts you is one you’ll endure with resentment.

Finally, we can do a future-self interview. Who will you become by training for this goal? Does that version of you feel grounded, confident, proud, and well, or depleted, anxious, performative? When you picture the outcome, does it look like peace or performance? If no one could know, would you still choose it? The right goal isn’t just about what you achieve, but about who you’ll have to become to achieve it, and whether that person is someone you’d actually want to live as.

When all these pieces align you can feel it, both in mind and body. The plan clicks. There’s a spark and steadiness. Excitement and relief in equal measure. The goal feels alive, but also sustainable. It gives energy instead of borrowing it.

Let’s not forget, the endurance world has made a habit of equating goals with races. But not everyone can, or wants to, race every season. Some are caring for newborns, navigating grief or injuries, rebuilding after burnout, or simply reprioritizing joy. These athletes are no less ambitious; they’re just operating from a wider definition of progress. For them, we can build practice-based goals instead of performance-based ones: improving downhill mechanics, building durability, mastering fueling or pacing, running every trail in the region, committing to consistency and joy. These goals may never trend, but they hold a different kind of power: they meet people where they actually live. In the end, the purpose of goal setting isn’t to prove something. It’s to align effort with meaning. The goal is more than the race. It’s the relationship you build with yourself while training for it.

From intention to architecture
Ambition also is not the problem. Often it’s the architecture. Goals endure when they are translated into the shape of a week. When they are measured by a handful of sincere metrics. Supported by fail-safes that respect life. What follows is a compact and practical blueprint, considered enough to last a season

Grand designs collapse at ordinary moments. “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”. A workable season is built by specifying how a typical week carries the intended stimulus. When the weekly rhythm is coherent, volume becomes a multiplier rather than a masquerade. If the week is musical, the season will hold.

I thrive to make the numbers serve the goal. Not impersonate it. Track only what alters outcomes: repeatable consistency, a volume range with a floor and ceiling rather than a single heroic peak, a long run floor that recurs, carb intake during long efforts, sleep, strength exposures that preserve tendons and knees. Mood and perceived exertion belong on this dashboard, if not top them all.

I am all about building the season in bricks. Blocks you are able to repeat its final week without dread. For example, a speed and economy phase to improve cadence, mechanics, and the ability to relax at honest paces. Its success shows up as easier easy and steadier steady. Followed by a vert and durability phase to teach our body the language of trails and ultras. Its success shows up on harder efforts, where most ambitions go to retire. It’s important to resist the urge to carry every stimulus at once. Periodization is key. Just as specificity is compassion for your future self. These are all part of the training.

This might be another good rule of thumb: run the intended plan for 30 days. If at least 80% of planned sessions and all process metrics hold, it’s a good sign. If not, the plan might be too large for life at the moment. These try-outs are cheaper than apologies to yourself later on. It’s good to remember that adaptation is the product of signal and recovery. The body does not negotiate with your coach’s spreadsheet.

And many seasons aren’t about racing. 2025 wasn’t for me. I like to believe progress remains available: a consistency arc, paired with durability, this all services goals that place you on the other side of the aid station table before you return to the start line. And these grow the athlete you will later ask to perform.

While the sport will continue to reward spectacle (fine with me, spectacle has its uses). It reminds us that human effort can be luminous. But the making of an athlete still happens elsewhere. The “right” goal is the one that fits inside your life without hollowing it out. When described plainly, it still sounds like a promise you want to keep. Set goals that ask for courage in the practice, not bravado in the registration. Build seasons that make sense to your life as it is, not as it performs. If you must have a final message, let it be this: Pick the goal that creates energy instead of borrowing it, and let the arc do the rest. Everything else, whether it’s fitness or results, introduces itself in time.