Have you ever heard the acronym SMART when it comes to making goals?

If you haven’t, it stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-bound

While these are fantastic metrics for setting goals, I think I disagree with one of them.

Let me tell you a story.

As you all know, I’m training for my first ever marathon. In this marathon I also hope and aim to hit a sub-3 hour marathon. This is so I can qualify for the Chicago guaranteed entry and potentially qualify for the Boston marathon.

See, I am following this SMART goals pattern pretty well.

• Specific: run in the Boston marathon

• Measurable: run a marathon in less than 3 hours

• Achievable: it’s not like I’m trying to compete with the elite and run a sub 2:10 marathon

• Relevant: running a sub 3-hour marathon is relevant to running

• Time-bound: do it in November

So where is the problem?

The problem comes when we fail.

See, one cool thing about goals is a lot of times we make sub-goals.

My goal is to run all 6 marathon majors.

I can break that down into sub goals:

• Run the Chicago marathon

• Run the Boston marathon

• Run the OBX marathon in sub 3-hours to qualify for Boston

• Train for the OBX marathon

• Run a specific hard workout at a specific pace

See how it all flows together?

So the other day I started my official marathon training block.

In it, I had my first long quality session which consisted of 15 total miles split between my easy pace and my threshold pace.

If you don’t know, an easy pace is one I can hold a conversation at, but my threshold pace is much faster.

There is a technical definition for “threshold” pace that has to do with blood lactate and stuff. But essentially it’s a pace that is a decent bit faster than a marathon pace.

It should be a pace you could run at for about 20 minutes before your muscles give up.

Well, everything going into this session was just off.

That week my calf was tight and causing pain even walking in the morning. I also decided to do my quality session in the evening instead of the morning or mid-day when I normally go.

Because of this I had a lot more food on my stomach than normal.

It was also scary to get out there to do it. To officially start the preparation for the marathon. What if I can’t hit my paces? I might fail at my goal!

But I get out there and do it…except…I failed.

I gave out around 9 miles and was able to push out one last mile at a pretty slow easy pace.

Totally missed the 15 by a long shot.

Furthermore, the run started with 2 easy miles, then 4 miles at threshold. I could only do 2 miles at threshold before I had to stop. Then I got 2 more in, but the pace was definitely slower than it needed to be.

My stomach was feeling off the whole time. My calf hurt. My joints were aching.

It felt like a failure. I felt like a failure.

But when the run was over and I had time to reflect, it made me realize a few things.

1. I wasn’t a failure. I still got out and ran and just the fact that I did that made it a successful run.

2. It’s ok to miss. Perhaps this training block will have lots of runs I can’t perfectly accomplish, but that’s ok. If I set my goals so low they are easily achieved then I’ll never improve.

And that is the realization I had.

The ‘A’ in SMART is a little misleading.

Yes, we should set goals that are achievable.

It is not physically possible for a human to run a marathon in say 1:40. That’ll never happen. But at the same time, if I set my goal of running the marathon in sub-6 hours, then I don’t need to train for that. That’s almost a walking speed.

Our goals should be optimally set so they are “achievable” but they feel just out of reach.

You might need to fail a couple of times as you reach your fingers up for that last cookie in the back of the pantry.

And you know what? During that run, I realized that’s exactly what I did. This is a goal that I might not achieve. I know I can, but I’m going to have to work really hard to get there. It’s not easy and the fear of failing is always right there pushing me along.

But it also means that when I do fail, it doesn’t mean I’m a failure. It means I actually set a good goal.

I don’t have a perfect ratio for how often you should fail vs succeed in our sub-goals, but whatever your goals in life are, if you never fail at them, then maybe you should consider setting higher goals.

Remember, if you collect this post, you could win a unique airdrop NFT for this post and earn your spot on my race jersey come November!