Most of us have longer term goals within the sport of triathlon.  These are usually associated with races; something like complete an Ironman race or podium in my age group, at the local sprint distance race.  It’s important to have these goals, but I also believe, that short term goals are important too.

Shorter term goals help keep you motivated on the journey towards your big goals.  Short term goals can vary a lot.  They might be something like go to bed earlier every day this week, to improve my rest habits; stay well within Zones 1 and 2 for all my easy runs this month or stay on track with my nutrition plan through the weekend.  It doesn’t matter what the short-term goal is, if it helps you improve. 

The other beauty of short term goals, is that you can make them something that you believe is relatively easy to achieve.  If you do this and do achieve them, it builds confidence that you can do bigger things in the future.

For now, I have one very simple short term goal…. get healthy enough to run again.  This means fixing the Achilles tendonitis issue that I have.  To do this requires several things.

• Rest :  Be patient and do force a return to running too early – relapses are very demoralizing.
• Regularly Ice :  Icing to reduce inflammation is helping.
• Physiotherapy Exercises :  Sticking to regular therapy, like the heel raises in the photo, will usually accelerate the healing process.

So far, I have done well with all three of these things this week, and it appears to be working.  My heel is a lot less sore today.  It’s still hurting, but getting better.

The final, interesting thing about my current short term goal, is that I haven’t put a deadline on it.  With injuries, you just never know.  That’s not to say I don’t think about returning to running very quickly, I do.  I just know that returning too soon, will likely just delay the process significantly.  I have to stay patient!