Achieving your Personal Best
6th July 2018
“I think I could run a marathon. I’m bloody well going to. I’m going to run a marathon!”
“I’m not in bad shape. How hard can it be? I reckon I could do it in less than 4 hours.”
“I’ve read a couple of Runners World articles online. I know what I’m doing. I’ll put together a 12-week training plan.”
“I’m going to smash it!”
In my experience, that is the general thought process when someone decides to do their first marathon. As training plans go, it’s pretty basic and non-scientific, but at least it’s a plan.
More serious runners may want to get as close to maximising their potential as possible and realise that employing the services of a coach will increase their chances of doing this. The coach will help them set an ambitious but realistic goal based on their current fitness, draw up a detailed training plan, keep them accountable, monitor progress and adjust both the plan and target race time as they go along.
Even the first the scenario above involves more planning than most people do for their financial future. This is strange, as you get multiple chances to try and get the best possible marathon PB…but only one chance to make sure you use your money to live the best possible life.
In both marathon running and life, success is not about God-given talent or ability. It is about knowing what you want, working out how to achieve it, and then sticking patiently to the plan no matter how hard it sometimes feels.
Very few people will turn up on the start line of a marathon without having followed some kind of training plan. Those that do learn a painful lesson….it usually starts at about mile 15!
However, many people turn up a few years from retirement having never given much thought to their finances and with no clear idea of how much money they need to live happily for the rest of their life.
Just like with the marathon, some good planning could change a potentially painful experience into something magical. And who knows, you might even get close to achieving a personal best life.
