Notes on running: About setting goals

(excerpt from Running the Sahara - a diary from the desert and beyond, published on 20th December, 2019)

There isn't no such thing as a “free lunch” in life, and we should not expect to receive something for nothing, without making an effort. From time to time we might get lucky, but as a general rule, accomplishing goals and reaching dreams takes a lot of hard work, and that is especially true in ultrarunning. Knowing how it feels to reach a goal creates an incredible amount of energy to fight for a new one. When I commit to a new running project, I often set goals where my family might think that I’m starting to go crazy. But setting a goal that may look a bit unreasonable at first feeds me with the needed energy and motivation to be persistent until I reach it. And if I then surround myself with people, such as friends, coaches, and mentors, and learn from their specific knowledge and experience, I gain the certainty over time that my goal is achievable.

The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.

Kahlil Gibran

That’s what has been proven to me in so many situations (the Marathon des Sables was one of them), and I’m confident that it will continue to be so. I always prefer to go for ambitious goals, and setting ambitious running goals helped me to improve steadily. Experience proves that missing an ambitious goal by a bit usually leads to a better result than overachieving a modest one. In the end, we’re all stronger than we think we are and are capable of shifting the borders of what we believe is possible. But setting ambitious goals is not the same as going for unrealistic ones, and sometimes there’s only a thin line separating them. I therefore always attach great importance to finding the right balance between inspiration and managing the mitigation of risks that may lead to failure.