How to look back on this season, decide what comes next, and build goals you can actually control
The race season is winding down. The bikes are hung up (and maybe even cleaned), the long runs are getting shorter, and for many of us Thanksgiving brings something rare: a few days with no alarm and no session on the calendar. That makes it the perfect window to look back at what we accomplished this year and decide what we want to work towards next year.
The timing isn’t only tradition. Researchers call it the “fresh start effect.” Landmarks like a holiday, the start of a new season, or a new year reliably increase goal-directed behavior, from gym visits to people signing up for commitment contracts. Those landmarks help us mentally file away last season’s imperfections and take a bigger-picture view of where we’re headed (Dai, Milkman & Riis, 2014). So let’s use it.
I recently had a conversation with an athlete I’ll be working with soon. He’s a scientist, and when we got to talking about what makes endurance sports (and triathlon specifically) so challenging, he summed it up perfectly:
“…Not enough experiments and too many variables!”
I love this quote. In science terms, it calls out what is ultimately both the detraction and the attraction of endurance sports: there’s a crazy amount of things outside of our control.
Think about it. A scientist gets to run an experiment over and over, changing one thing at a time. We get a handful of races a year (even fewer for long course). And on each of those days the weather, the water temperature, the wind, the course, the other competitors, our sleep the night before and how work went that week all show up uninvited. One race, dozens of variables, and no do-overs.
The variables aren’t the problem — fighting them is.
If we fight that fact, we can go down a path of frustration, perceived injustice (“why does it always blow 20 mph on MY race day?”) and potentially diminishing self-esteem. It’s one of the many factors that make endurance sports challenging: they’re hard, and no certain outcome is ever assured. But that’s also what attracts us. If the result were guaranteed, why would any of us set a 5 a.m. alarm to go find out?
Why bother writing goals down?
Goals do real work. Decades of research show that a well-set goal directs our attention, mobilizes effort, keeps us persisting when it gets hard, and pushes us to find better strategies (Locke & Latham, 2002). In practical terms, that means clarity on what each session is for, a training strategy instead of a pile of workouts, less risk of over- or under-training, and an easy way to see whether we’re progressing.
So why do so many athletes skip it? Usually it’s fear: of committing, of being accountable, or of not hitting the goal and feeling like we failed. That fear makes sense when the only goal on paper is a finish time. A headwind can take a finish time away from us. That’s exactly why how we structure our goals matters as much as what they are.
Three kinds of goals
I’ve written about this before: getting a grasp on what we control and what is out of our control, and setting goals with that in mind. It’s good to remind ourselves of the three types.
Outcome goals THE DESTINATION
These are goals that can be easily influenced by outside factors (weather, other competitors’ performance, and so on). A podium, a Kona or 70.3 Worlds slot, or a time like a sub 6 or a sub 5 are all outcome goals. They’re good to have, but NOT achieving them may have nothing to do with our performance. A headwind on the bike doesn’t care how fit we are.
The research backs this up. In a 2024 meta-analysis of goal setting in sport, outcome goals on their own had a negligible effect on performance (Williamson et al., 2024). They’re the why. They can’t carry the season by themselves.
Performance goals THE MAP
These are goals that we control: pacing, nutrition, execution, and the fitness markers that make them possible. These are what we focus on above all else during races. Did we hold our watts on the climb? Did we stay on our fueling plan? Did we run the first mile at the pace we planned, not the pace our adrenaline wanted? If the answer is yes, that’s a successful day, whatever the clock says.
In training, performance goals are the measurable gaps between where we are and where the outcome goal needs us to be: a higher FTP, a faster CSS, a stronger run threshold.
Process goals THE DAILY STEPS
These are weekly and daily goals that we commit to while understanding that we have to make adjustments each and every day. The sick kid, the late meeting, the flat tire on the way out the door… Process goals are where we practice handling variables. Adjusting isn’t failing the plan — it is the plan.
These are also the goals with the strongest evidence. In the same meta-analysis, process goals produced the largest performance effect of any goal type, along with a large boost in self-efficacy, our belief that we can do the thing (Williamson et al., 2024). A year-long study of club golfers pointed the same way: athletes who trained with process goals improved their confidence and their ability to keep anxiety in check, not only their scores (Kingston & Hardy, 1997).
Stack them — don’t pick one
The best approach isn’t choosing one type. It’s linking all three. In a controlled study, athletes who combined outcome and process goals outperformed those who used a single goal type, in both training and competition. The single-goal groups did no better than athletes with no goals at all (Filby, Maynard & Graydon, 1999).
Outcome goals give us the destination. Performance goals give us the map. Process goals are the steps we take every day.
Your Thanksgiving Sit-Down: seven steps
Grab a coffee (or a slice of pie), your training log, and the CEC 2027 Goals Worksheet. Give yourself an hour. Don’t overthink it or get bogged down in the minutiae. A good plan you actually use beats a perfect one sitting in a drawer. The worksheet below is fillable as a download, but for me being a bit old-school, I like to hand write my responses and that action along with looking at the final product helps imbed the responses in a more concert manner in my brain. Also, I like pencil, not so much as it allows me to erase my responses by rather the sensation of writing with pencil is stronger than with ink, but is just me.
FREE DOWNLOAD
Download the CEC 2027 Goals Worksheet
A fillable, four-page PDF that walks you through all seven steps below. Fill it in on screen or print it out.
Download the worksheet (PDF)Step 1 Review the data from 2026
Before setting anything new, look back. Every race and every training week this year was a data point. Write down:
• Three things that went well, and why
• Three things you’d change
• The variables that showed up uninvited (heat, wind, illness, work travel) and how you handled them
• What you controlled and executed, regardless of the result
Step 2 Write your mission
One or two sentences on why you do this sport. Not a time — a reason. “I train because it makes me a better parent and a calmer person at work.” When the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. in February, this is what gets you out of bed.
Step 3 Pick your season, then be honest about your time
Races are often fixed by date and location, so set the season up first. Then write out the time you realistically have to train, by day: Monday to Friday 5:30–7 a.m., Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon. Compare that to what your race distance asks for. If the math doesn’t work, adjust the race or the goal now, not in June.
Step 4 Choose one big goal
This is your outcome goals for 2027, and the centerpiece of the worksheet. Keep your key goals to three or fewer, you can add supporting goals but not too many. A good big goal:
• Demands hard work and requires some concessions
• Matters enough to shape a few life choices
• Is a little bit frightening
• Is yours — not your training partner’s, not Instagram’s
Step 5 Work backwards to performance goals
Ask: what would I need to be able to do for that outcome to be likely? Here’s an example from my own 70.3 planning. Goal time: 5:30–5:40. To get there I needed roughly a 40-minute swim at 1:45/100, a 2:40–2:45 bike off an FTP of about 220 watts, and a 2:10 run off a running critical power of about 220 watts. My numbers at the time were a 1:50 swim pace, a 195-watt FTP and a 205-watt run CP.
The gaps are the performance goals: 1:50 to 1:45 in the pool, 195 to 220 watts on the bike, 205 to 220 on the run. This is where SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) earn their keep. Put a date and a retest on each one. We retest every 8–12 weeks — if you’re not testing, you’re guessing.
Step 6 Turn them into process goals with if–then plans
Use the worksheet categories: swim, bike, run, strength, nutrition and hydration, recovery, and mindset. One process goal per category is plenty. Examples: six sessions a week, in bed by 10 p.m., a recovery snack after every session, two strength sessions a week through the winter.
Then plan for the variables before they arrive. Writing goals as “if X happens, then I will do Y” is called an implementation intention, and across 94 studies it had a moderate-to-large effect on actually reaching goals (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). For example:
• If the meeting runs late, then I’ll do the 45-minute trainer version of the ride.
• If a thunderstorm rolls in, then the 3-hour outdoor ride becomes 1.5 hours inside.
• If I miss a session, then I let it go and nail the next one — no doubling up.
• If I’m feeling a niggle, then I message my coach before the session, not after.
Step 7 Set your review rhythm
Goals that live in a drawer don’t work. Share them with your coach, a training partner, or a friend, and ask whether they look realistic. Then:
• Do a weekly Sunday Sit-Down: what got done, what got in the way, what’s next week
• Review performance goals at every retest (every 8–12 weeks)
• Once the big goal is set, put it to the side and focus on the short-term steps
• Adjust as the season unfolds — that’s part of the process, not a failure of it
Borrow a little from the scientist
Every race and every training week is a data point. We change what we can, note what we can’t, and keep going. One race won’t tell us much, but over a season (and over years) the data adds up and the picture gets clearer.
And honestly? The variables are what make a great day feel great. Nailing our pacing and nutrition on a perfect, calm day is nice. Doing it with the wind howling and the temperature climbing is something we remember for a long time.
Enjoy the time off, enjoy the people around the table, and spend an hour of it on your Sit-Down. There will always be too many variables. Let’s control what we can and enjoy the rest.
Train with purpose.
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References
Dai, H., Milkman, K. L., & Riis, J. (2014). The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Management Science, 60(10), 2563–2582. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1901
Filby, W. C. D., Maynard, I. W., & Graydon, J. K. (1999). The effect of multiple-goal strategies on performance outcomes in training and competition. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 11(2), 230–246.
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
Kingston, K. M., & Hardy, L. (1997). Effects of different types of goals on processes that support performance. The Sport Psychologist, 11(3), 277–293.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.
Williamson, O., Swann, C., Bennett, K. J. M., Bird, M. D., Goddard, S. G., Schweickle, M. J., & Jackman, P. C. (2024). The performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17(2), 1050–1078. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2022.2116723
