The Importance of Having a Plan and Sticking with It
Oct 19th, 2009 by Nut
This past Saturday, I ran the Chicago Urbanathlon for the second year in a row. It’s basically an 11-mile race with an obstacle course mixed in. You see that pretty wall in the picture? That’s the finish line.
I ran the race last year for the first time and it was quite the experience. My final time was 1:39 and I was GASSED at the end. I almost puked right before I crossed the finish line.
I thought I did pretty well for someone that had never run a race before.
This year I knew what to expect and I knew what I needed to do differently to improve my time. I didn’t train as hard as last year because I knew what was coming. What I did have was a plan.
Thanks to the experience I gained from running it last year, I would be doing two things differently:
- Calm down: when you get to each one of the obstacles, there are people cheering and you get all pumped up. You want to speed through the obstacle as fast as you can. After all, it is a race. But I learned my lesson from last year—doing that takes a LOT of energy. And running 11 miles after speeding through these obstacles means you’ll be in pain at the end.
- Go faster at the end: I dragged during the last leg of the race last year. A LOT of people passed me and I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, I’m losing ground pretty fast here.” I was hurting, but I knew I could’ve gone a little bit faster here if I knew how I’d feel before hitting the stairs.
So that was the plan: don’t use up your energy by blazing through the obstacles and use some of that saved energy on the last leg to really step it up. Sounds simple, right?
Well, coming up with the plan is easy, it’s following you own instructions that’s hard. Because once you’re out there and you see that first obstacle, it’s very tough to control yourself. I managed to execute.
I took it easy and had some gas left at the end, which I used to pass a whole bunch of people during that last leg (running with my iPod helped too).
The result? I ran the race in 1:35—an improvement of four minutes from last year’s time. And I probably trained half as hard as last year.
What Does This Have to do with Anything?
I used my experience to formulate a plan and I stuck to the plan when I was out there. It sounds simple, but this formula will take you far in anything you do. Whether it’s trading stocks or setting up your budget, using what you’ve learned from a previous experience and executing a plan based off of it will usually pay off.
As long as you get incrementally better at what you’re doing, you’re moving in the right direction.
And don’t forget to save a little something for the wall.
