Goals and Goal Posts

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Qualify to have guaranteed entry into the Chicago Marathon
Run a marathon in 3 hours 15 minutes

In the spring these goals were the same just worded differently. Now, they are different and the semantics matter. 

Sometime in July the Chicago Marathon organizers dropped the guaranteed entry time for my age group by 5 full minutes after a drop of 10 minutes the year before and I missed the memo. When I finished my previous marathon in October and even my Half-marathon in the spring earlier this year, it felt like 3hrs and 15mins was very much on the horizon, which in turn would put me into Chicago. But now there is a shifting and unsettling of the goals. 

The goal posts moved. Now I need to run a 3:10:00 to reach my Chicago goal. Running 3:15:00 would undoubtedly be an amazing feat, but doesn't advance me to the running experiences I expected.

Can I run a 3:10 marathon now? I've been through this argument before as recently as 2 weeks ago.  My training so far says it's plausible, but all the race equivalency calculators say forget about it. And now with a week of training lost and suspect calf strain recovery, it's hard to say what kind of sand is in the system that makes the 3:10 mark even less attainable.

But what do I have to lose? Move to the new goal posts? Go hard? Full send?

The mental somersaults I'm going through at the moment feel very interesting and happening in real time.

So I think this is what the new goal set looks like...

A Goal: Qualify for Chicago Marathon by running a 3:10:00
B Goal: Run a 3:15:00 and pretend like its 2025
C Goal: Run a personal best (under 3:21:33)
D Goal: finish the distance

next steps after Monumental Marathon on November 8, 2025

Take the winter "off"
Train for a fast 10k in the spring/summer
--If I've qualified for Chicago, Amazing train and run that.
--If not, sign up for Detroit and try and hit the goals above again.

Note:I'm not even brining Boston into this conversation...even if that is the BIG BIG goal.















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