July 18, 2023
7 Guideposts To Help You Pick Your A-Race
This criteria will help inform your next a-race and can help you choose better goals in the future.
An A-Race is the focal point of most athlete’s entire calendar year. Inherently, A-Races require the most attention and specific preparation. They can literally be the culmination of years of work. With all the focus that goes into the training and planing for these events, it’s vital athletes choose the right goal for them. Adapted from legendary success Coach Jeff Patterson‘s criteria for knowing you’ve found your big thing, these seven guideposts will help you determine whether your A-Race is truly an A-Race and whether it’s the right fit for you.
Criteria For Choosing Your Next A-Race:
1. You have too deeply want the goal.
Ask yourself, would you do this if you couldn’t tell anyone about it? A-Races ask us to look deep within, they require our hearts and souls to accomplish. The best way to ensure an A-Race is right for you is if you’d still choose it, even if you couldn’t tell anyone about it. Wanting to complete the goal needs to first and foremost come from within.
2. It’s scary.
An A-race should be genuinely scary. It should challenge you physically or mentally or both.
3. The goal feels like a step, but not a giant leap.
Even though it’s scary, it shouldn’t feel like you are fully stepping into the unknown. Your past training history should support the goal. If it doesn’t, change your timeline and find more intermediary goals first.
4. It asks the athlete to change a habit or belief.
A-races ask us to transform. They ask us to rise to new levels of being and to think critically but not judgmentally about the way we have been doing things and about how we might tweak our current habits and beliefs to support our goals.
5. It requires help.
An A-race isn’t truly an A-race if you can do it alone. An A-race requires us to ask for support, from coaches, friends, family, volunteers and competitors. A-races are always a collaboration and aren’t solely an individual pursuit.
6. The goal allows you to live the life you want to live.
Goals are great motivators, but they have the power to be so much more when we choose the right one. They can help us change our habits, routines, and lean more into sources of joy. The right A-race for you is a race that allows you to begin living an idealized version of your best life, it should elevate you, especially in the training process.
7. The goal should reflect your values.
A-races are too inherently difficult for them to not have deep meaning, but beyond that they have to reflect our values back to us. Whether its in environmental stewardship, equity, community, respect, diversity and so much more, an A-race must share your values and reflect them back at you. When we stand in integrity with our values, and choose goals that act as mirrors for those values, we’re much more likely to have the kind of experiences we want at those events, and in the process tap more deeply into our potential.