January: Desire

   Try this for a New Year's resolution: write your running goals for the year on a sheet of paper, then crumple it into a ball and shoot it toward a trash can. Give yourself two free shots. If you miss both, you're stuck for the year trying to meet your written goals. Good luck. Otherwise, leave the crumpled page in the can.

   Perhaps it belongs there. Make no mistake; you have everything to gain in setting goals. This is why running books, trainers, and well-intentioned workout partners urge you to put them in writing. Yet look how barren the advice becomes once the experts have stated the obvious. Most running books offer platitudes and empty, feel-good encouragement for goals. Coaches and trainers serve up specific workouts that only sometimes take into account your conflicted desires, your constantly changing stamina and speed, or your pain.

   For runners, goal setting is a majestically lonely act. Strategy and determination aren't good enough to advance your abilities, never mind what the running books say. You need a stubborn imagination--the unfailing ability to see yourself as something better than you are--even when your knees hurt, when the rain won't quit, or when the stopwatch says you're lazy.

   You'd think that racers would have it easy in the matter of goals. The calendar imposes a date; imagination, strategy, and discipline marshal the best of cumulative efforts, everything working toward the crack of the starting gun. If only it were so easy. Every race is a rehearsal for the next race. What you hope to achieve at any given event is personal and subject to change. Most world-class marathoners and track-and-field champions have an uncanny ability to know when the goal is right, when to lock into it at all costs, letting other goals fall away. Likewise, they know when to skip a race, even when the taste for winning it is both mean and sweet.

   There's a lesson in this for noncompetitive runners. Like it or not, your goals, whatever they are, will change--from month to month, even from moment to moment. Can you crest the next hill or make another half mile? Can you sneak an unplanned run into your lunch hour this Tuesday? Workouts should accommodate your immediate fitness and desires, and the ever-shifting time you can devote to running. They should inform your larger goals. The trouble with New Year's resolutions is that this order is reversed.

   Resolutions work strikingly well for some runners. If you want to lose 20 pounds by Memorial Day or run your first marathon in September, you'll obviously need a plan. Discipline, strategy, and luck will take you there, just as the running books tell you. But what if training for a marathon proves you to be a sensational 10K racer? What if your extra heft suddenly looks good when toned into muscle by running? Are you willing to let old goals drop away? To see something better in yourself, you need a solemn and recurring self-appraisal. Be willing to change plans as needed. It's another way of staying fast on your feet.