68. The Goal That Feels Safe vs. The Goal You Want
There's a moment before every race where you make a bet on yourself, and most runners don't realize they're making it. It happens when you choose your race goal. Do you go after the goal you really want, knowing you might not achieve it? Or do you choose the goal that feels safer because you're afraid of falling short? That one decision shapes how you approach your race before you ever reach the starting line and says far more about what you believe you're capable of than most ultra runners realize.
In this episode, I explore why so many ultra runners hold themselves back before the race even begins. I break down the hidden cost of choosing the safe goal, why fear often disguises itself as being realistic, and how the goal you choose influences your race strategy, your confidence, and the relationship you build with yourself as an ultra runner.
Choosing the goal you really want isn't about guaranteeing success. It's about deciding to believe in yourself before the race even starts. I share a simple way to think about ambitious goals that can help you stop letting fear make your decisions and build your confidence as an ultra runner whether you hit your goal or not.
My 1:1 Mental Mastery Coaching for Ultrarunners is a six-month coaching program where we build the mental skills experienced ultrarunners use to handle difficult races well. Schedule a consult call to learn more here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why choosing the safe goal may be limiting your potential before the race even begins.
The hidden cost of letting fear decide your race goal.
How your race goal shapes your confidence and your identity as an ultra runner.
Why pursuing an ambitious goal helps you grow as an ultra runner, whether you achieve it or not.
How to make race goals that reflect what you truly want, not what feels safest.
Why this one decision influences every choice you make on race day.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
There's a moment before every race where you make a bet on yourself, and most runners don't realize they're making it. In this episode, I'll show you exactly what's on the table so you can make that bet on purpose.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 68. I coach a variety of clients one-on-one: new ultra runners, veterans, experienced ultra runners, all speeds, all parts of the pack, everybody. So, naturally, I have clients going for different goals. Some are going for a big, intimidating A-race, and they want to face it with a clear plan and the ability to execute it. Some are getting past a DNF and don't want it to weigh them down; they want it to power them forward instead.
Some are aging, and they want excellence instead of age to be the theme of their races. And some are slower than they want to be, and they want to stop losing time to hesitation and doubt and negative thinking and distraction so they can finish strong. And even among all these different clients with all these different goals and, of course, different race schedules, sometimes the same issue comes up independently for several of them at the same time.
And the past week or two has definitely been one of those times. And I wanted to share what has come up because I know it can help you too. And here's a hint about what it is: it's a choice you make that looks easy, and most runners don't give it much thought. But it decides how you're going to run the whole race and also how you decide it in this race will follow you into the next race. So it's worth choosing on purpose.
I'll show you what I mean. The clients facing this issue are all at the same starting point. They're all getting ready to plan their race. Fixed time, fixed distance, even last man standing, all different kinds of formats. And this issue comes up at the very first step in the race planning process: choosing their goal. I ask them a very simple, basic question: what do you want your goal to be? It seems like a very easy question. It should be easy to answer. It's very open-ended.
All I have to do is say a number, however many laps or miles or what finish time they want to hit, but it's not as easy answer as it seems because some clients haven't given it any thought beyond, "I just want to finish ahead of cutoff," or they've automatically picked a goal that's slightly above last year's race or another race that they've done, or they chose the same goal as a friend, or they've thought about it and they can't decide. But no matter why, they all give me the same answer: "I want to do this harder goal, but I think I should do this easier one."
For example, one client going into a six-hour race said, "My goal is 33 miles, but I'd really like to do 36." And what's important here isn't her numbers. I want you to tune the numbers out. The numbers aren't important. What is important here is the internal bet she's making. Even if you always say, "I just want to finish ahead of cutoff," you're making the same decision she is. You're going through the same thought process. Are you going to choose the easy goal or the one you want?
gain, the question seems very simple: what's your goal? Just pick a number you want and move on. So I asked this client, "Okay then, 36 miles?" And here's where they all pause and admit what they're really thinking: "But what if I choose the 36 and I don't make it? I'll have failed. And you're not supposed to fail. I'll feel bad. I'll be disappointed. People will think I'm a failure. They'll think I did something stupid and irresponsible and I went for this goal I shouldn't have."
When we dig deeper into why failing is such a problem, we get into the heart of why they don't choose the goal they want. And here it is: "It will hurt my confidence. I don't want to find out that I can't hit that goal." That's the fear. They don't want to find that out about themselves because they believe it would be painful. Not just disappointing, but painful because they'd have to resolve this gap between the way they see themselves as a good, successful ultra runner—and that takes a lot of belief—and now this gap between that self-image and the runner who failed, which is a painful gap.
But notice that 33 and 36 in this case aren't that far apart. Both numbers are well within this client's reach. I mean, 36 is a reach, but it's not physically impossible for her. From the outside, if you're just looking outside at her making this decision, the difference between those two numbers might not look like a big deal. But if you've been there trying to make that decision, or you're there right now, you know how weighty this decision feels. Clients in this situation feel a lot of incentive to stay safely under their ambitious goal to avoid potential for failing and avoid having to rethink how they see themselves as ultra runners, understandably.
So to help them make this decision and see what they're really deciding, I walk through how 33 will play out and how 36 will play out, what each one costs them and what each one gains them, and then they decide. So let's look at that. First, we'll look at what happens with this client if she chooses the easier goal, 33 miles. If she goes for 33, she's likely to hit it. She's going to stay safely away from failing at the bigger goal, 36, but she also rules out any chance to hit 36.
And that's the one she really wants. She plans her race around the goal of 33 miles. Everything is aimed at hitting 33 miles. As another client says, she's aiming the car at 33 miles, so that's all she's going to do. Once she gets to 33, she's done. Goal achieved, success reached. She's unlikely to have the time or the drive left to chase what is now an extra three miles. She's had a successful race and she can relax now, and she doesn't find out if 36 is possible.
But if she goes for the goal she really wants, that risky 36 miles that she might fail at, here's what happens. She's nervous going in, but we build a solid race plan for her that is based around aiming that car at 36 miles. We build a plan for pacing, fueling, aid station targets, breaks, all of it mapped out so that the goal isn't hope, it's a plan. Now, when in the race, she hits 33 miles and keeps going. There's no stop point built in there. 33 isn't the finish line, so she doesn't treat it like one.
It might be a little milestone. She might say, "Yay, here I go to 34," but she doesn't stop there. She moves past it into new territory, miles she's never covered before in this race at a pace that she hasn't sustained for this long before. And she either reaches 36 or she runs out of time, but either way, she finds out exactly where her limit is right now instead of still sitting around guessing and wondering. She finds out if 36 is possible for her today. And if not, she finds out exactly what she needs to change to get there.
So, now that we played those two scenarios out, the stakes are clearer. And here are the gains and the costs. For 33 miles, the easy goal, the gain is that with this goal, it seems like she's setting herself up for a successful race. No disappointment, no risk of failing. She's likely to hit her goal of 36 miles. She gets to maintain her current identity as a successful ultra runner. Everything is great.
But there's a cost to that 33-mile goal. When she goes for the safe 33 miles, she's surrendering to fear, and she knows it. She's letting fear bully her. And that is not a strong way to go into a race. She's for sure losing the possibility of hitting a big, exciting goal and finding out what she can really do. She's almost surely not going to get 36 miles because it's not her goal, it's not what she's aiming at. And it seems like she's staying safely away from failing, but get this: what she's really doing is failing ahead of time.
Not just with her goal, but with her relationship with herself because in going for 33, the easy goal, because she's essentially saying she doesn't believe in herself. She doesn't think she can do it. It's like saying to herself, "I don't think you can do it." She doesn't believe, she's communicating to herself and reinforcing that she doesn't believe her goals are worth feeling disappointment for. What she wants isn't that important. Avoiding a little disappointment is more important than what she wants. And she's deciding ahead of time she's going to fail.
If you're in this position and you go for the easy goal, you're essentially telling yourself, "I don't think you can do it. I think you're going to fail. I don't believe in you." Now, is this the relationship you want with yourself? How would you feel if somebody else said that to you? You'd feel crappy. So why are you saying it to yourself? And since she hits her 33-mile goal and now has a longer history of success that she could endanger, now she has more to lose.
And that's the attitude, that's the thinking that she carries over into the next race. With more to protect, she's even less likely to go for the goal that she really wants next time. In fact, she might stop thinking in terms of goals altogether and without realizing it, start asking herself instead of “what do I want to do in this race?” “What's reasonable in this race?”
That's not about whether she can hit 36. It's about whether she believes she's worth going for it. And that shows up in the next race and the next. And every time, every time this attitude shows up, and that's how you make a choice about goals, that gets stronger and harder to overcome. It's a compounding hit to her identity as an ultra runner that's not easy to see in the moment.
Now, let's take 36. The cost of 36 is obviously that if she goes for the 36-mile goal, it could cost her a finish or it could cost her goal. She might not hit it. It seems likely since she's never done it before, and this is a reach. Failing would definitely be disappointing. She might feel disappointed, but it also feels risky to stick your neck out and declare a big goal like this for anybody because people are going to know you failed.
So that's the potential cost she is facing if she goes for the 36-mile goal. It's easy for her to see all of this as a potential hit to her identity. But the gain on the 36-mile side of the equation is way bigger than anything else because going for 36 miles is the only way she's going to get to 36 miles. And the potential for failure isn't actually as big as it seems. Even if she doesn't make 36, she might hit 34 or 35, which is still more than the safe goal of 33.
But more than that, more than the numbers, she's standing up to fear and not letting it bully her. She's saying she believes in herself enough to go for that goal. And believing in yourself is always more powerful than having everybody else in the world believing in you. That is the most important belief. And if she doesn't reach 36, she learns she can handle not hitting the goal. Even getting close tells her more than settling for 33 ever will. And she's telling herself she's worth going for the big goal, and she's strong enough to handle it.
And once she dares to fail, which she might not, but once she dares to fail at hitting 36, she's not as tied to protecting her win, her success if she does hit it, because now she has risked failure and she knows she can survive it. She's gotten okay with that, so it doesn't scare her like it used to because she knows she can survive the risk of not hitting her goal if it does come to that. She's learned how good it feels, the freedom to let go of that safe cage and do what she really wants to do.
So if you're here and you're in this position that this client was in and you're choosing between a risky goal and a safe one, what if you said to yourself, "I'm going to go for this audacious goal because I want to. I think I have a shot and I want to see what's possible. I want to reach." Because it's not about hitting the outcome or not. It's about reaching for something you want and seeing what's possible. And that is the only choice where you grow your identity as an ultra runner. So, just to sum it up, here are how the numbers work.
If you aim for 33, are you likely to get 36? Nope. If you aim for 36, are you likely to get 33? Absolutely. Are you likely to see what you can do if you aim for 33? No, you’re just going to hit 33. Are you likely to see what you can do if you aim for 36, even if you don't hit it? Yes, absolutely. When you go for the bigger goal that you want, even a miss pays off because choosing a goal is about far more than the black and white outcome, yes or no, whether you hit the number or not. It's about how you see yourself and what your actions prove about that long before you ever get in the race.
Choosing a goal is your chance to make it safe to go for what you want, to decide ahead of time that you'll feel more proud that you dared to go for a big goal that you want whether you hit it or not. This moment, this choice of goal sets the tone and the belief for the whole rest of the race. So don't default to the safe goal, and especially don't default automatically. Listen to what you actually want and stand by it and bet on yourself. Yes, you might fail at that bigger goal. It can happen, but the gain of doing everything in your power to go for the goal that you really want far, far outweighs the cost of not reaching it.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 68. I coach a variety of clients one-on-one: new ultra runners, veterans, experienced ultra runners, all speeds, all parts of the pack, everybody. So, naturally, I have clients going for different goals. Some are going for a big, intimidating A-race, and they want to face it with a clear plan and the ability to execute it. Some are getting past a DNF and don't want it to weigh them down; they want it to power them forward instead.
Some are aging, and they want excellence instead of age to be the theme of their races. And some are slower than they want to be, and they want to stop losing time to hesitation and doubt and negative thinking and distraction so they can finish strong. And even among all these different clients with all these different goals and, of course, different race schedules, sometimes the same issue comes up independently for several of them at the same time.
And the past week or two has definitely been one of those times. And I wanted to share what has come up because I know it can help you too. And here's a hint about what it is: it's a choice you make that looks easy, and most runners don't give it much thought. But it decides how you're going to run the whole race and also how you decide it in this race will follow you into the next race. So it's worth choosing on purpose.
I'll show you what I mean. The clients facing this issue are all at the same starting point. They're all getting ready to plan their race. Fixed time, fixed distance, even last man standing, all different kinds of formats. And this issue comes up at the very first step in the race planning process: choosing their goal. I ask them a very simple, basic question: what do you want your goal to be? It seems like a very easy question. It should be easy to answer. It's very open-ended.
All I have to do is say a number, however many laps or miles or what finish time they want to hit, but it's not as easy answer as it seems because some clients haven't given it any thought beyond, "I just want to finish ahead of cutoff," or they've automatically picked a goal that's slightly above last year's race or another race that they've done, or they chose the same goal as a friend, or they've thought about it and they can't decide. But no matter why, they all give me the same answer: "I want to do this harder goal, but I think I should do this easier one."
For example, one client going into a six-hour race said, "My goal is 33 miles, but I'd really like to do 36." And what's important here isn't her numbers. I want you to tune the numbers out. The numbers aren't important. What is important here is the internal bet she's making. Even if you always say, "I just want to finish ahead of cutoff," you're making the same decision she is. You're going through the same thought process. Are you going to choose the easy goal or the one you want?
gain, the question seems very simple: what's your goal? Just pick a number you want and move on. So I asked this client, "Okay then, 36 miles?" And here's where they all pause and admit what they're really thinking: "But what if I choose the 36 and I don't make it? I'll have failed. And you're not supposed to fail. I'll feel bad. I'll be disappointed. People will think I'm a failure. They'll think I did something stupid and irresponsible and I went for this goal I shouldn't have."
When we dig deeper into why failing is such a problem, we get into the heart of why they don't choose the goal they want. And here it is: "It will hurt my confidence. I don't want to find out that I can't hit that goal." That's the fear. They don't want to find that out about themselves because they believe it would be painful. Not just disappointing, but painful because they'd have to resolve this gap between the way they see themselves as a good, successful ultra runner—and that takes a lot of belief—and now this gap between that self-image and the runner who failed, which is a painful gap.
But notice that 33 and 36 in this case aren't that far apart. Both numbers are well within this client's reach. I mean, 36 is a reach, but it's not physically impossible for her. From the outside, if you're just looking outside at her making this decision, the difference between those two numbers might not look like a big deal. But if you've been there trying to make that decision, or you're there right now, you know how weighty this decision feels. Clients in this situation feel a lot of incentive to stay safely under their ambitious goal to avoid potential for failing and avoid having to rethink how they see themselves as ultra runners, understandably.
So to help them make this decision and see what they're really deciding, I walk through how 33 will play out and how 36 will play out, what each one costs them and what each one gains them, and then they decide. So let's look at that. First, we'll look at what happens with this client if she chooses the easier goal, 33 miles. If she goes for 33, she's likely to hit it. She's going to stay safely away from failing at the bigger goal, 36, but she also rules out any chance to hit 36.
And that's the one she really wants. She plans her race around the goal of 33 miles. Everything is aimed at hitting 33 miles. As another client says, she's aiming the car at 33 miles, so that's all she's going to do. Once she gets to 33, she's done. Goal achieved, success reached. She's unlikely to have the time or the drive left to chase what is now an extra three miles. She's had a successful race and she can relax now, and she doesn't find out if 36 is possible.
But if she goes for the goal she really wants, that risky 36 miles that she might fail at, here's what happens. She's nervous going in, but we build a solid race plan for her that is based around aiming that car at 36 miles. We build a plan for pacing, fueling, aid station targets, breaks, all of it mapped out so that the goal isn't hope, it's a plan. Now, when in the race, she hits 33 miles and keeps going. There's no stop point built in there. 33 isn't the finish line, so she doesn't treat it like one.
It might be a little milestone. She might say, "Yay, here I go to 34," but she doesn't stop there. She moves past it into new territory, miles she's never covered before in this race at a pace that she hasn't sustained for this long before. And she either reaches 36 or she runs out of time, but either way, she finds out exactly where her limit is right now instead of still sitting around guessing and wondering. She finds out if 36 is possible for her today. And if not, she finds out exactly what she needs to change to get there.
So, now that we played those two scenarios out, the stakes are clearer. And here are the gains and the costs. For 33 miles, the easy goal, the gain is that with this goal, it seems like she's setting herself up for a successful race. No disappointment, no risk of failing. She's likely to hit her goal of 36 miles. She gets to maintain her current identity as a successful ultra runner. Everything is great.
But there's a cost to that 33-mile goal. When she goes for the safe 33 miles, she's surrendering to fear, and she knows it. She's letting fear bully her. And that is not a strong way to go into a race. She's for sure losing the possibility of hitting a big, exciting goal and finding out what she can really do. She's almost surely not going to get 36 miles because it's not her goal, it's not what she's aiming at. And it seems like she's staying safely away from failing, but get this: what she's really doing is failing ahead of time.
Not just with her goal, but with her relationship with herself because in going for 33, the easy goal, because she's essentially saying she doesn't believe in herself. She doesn't think she can do it. It's like saying to herself, "I don't think you can do it." She doesn't believe, she's communicating to herself and reinforcing that she doesn't believe her goals are worth feeling disappointment for. What she wants isn't that important. Avoiding a little disappointment is more important than what she wants. And she's deciding ahead of time she's going to fail.
If you're in this position and you go for the easy goal, you're essentially telling yourself, "I don't think you can do it. I think you're going to fail. I don't believe in you." Now, is this the relationship you want with yourself? How would you feel if somebody else said that to you? You'd feel crappy. So why are you saying it to yourself? And since she hits her 33-mile goal and now has a longer history of success that she could endanger, now she has more to lose.
And that's the attitude, that's the thinking that she carries over into the next race. With more to protect, she's even less likely to go for the goal that she really wants next time. In fact, she might stop thinking in terms of goals altogether and without realizing it, start asking herself instead of “what do I want to do in this race?” “What's reasonable in this race?”
That's not about whether she can hit 36. It's about whether she believes she's worth going for it. And that shows up in the next race and the next. And every time, every time this attitude shows up, and that's how you make a choice about goals, that gets stronger and harder to overcome. It's a compounding hit to her identity as an ultra runner that's not easy to see in the moment.
Now, let's take 36. The cost of 36 is obviously that if she goes for the 36-mile goal, it could cost her a finish or it could cost her goal. She might not hit it. It seems likely since she's never done it before, and this is a reach. Failing would definitely be disappointing. She might feel disappointed, but it also feels risky to stick your neck out and declare a big goal like this for anybody because people are going to know you failed.
So that's the potential cost she is facing if she goes for the 36-mile goal. It's easy for her to see all of this as a potential hit to her identity. But the gain on the 36-mile side of the equation is way bigger than anything else because going for 36 miles is the only way she's going to get to 36 miles. And the potential for failure isn't actually as big as it seems. Even if she doesn't make 36, she might hit 34 or 35, which is still more than the safe goal of 33.
But more than that, more than the numbers, she's standing up to fear and not letting it bully her. She's saying she believes in herself enough to go for that goal. And believing in yourself is always more powerful than having everybody else in the world believing in you. That is the most important belief. And if she doesn't reach 36, she learns she can handle not hitting the goal. Even getting close tells her more than settling for 33 ever will. And she's telling herself she's worth going for the big goal, and she's strong enough to handle it.
And once she dares to fail, which she might not, but once she dares to fail at hitting 36, she's not as tied to protecting her win, her success if she does hit it, because now she has risked failure and she knows she can survive it. She's gotten okay with that, so it doesn't scare her like it used to because she knows she can survive the risk of not hitting her goal if it does come to that. She's learned how good it feels, the freedom to let go of that safe cage and do what she really wants to do.
So if you're here and you're in this position that this client was in and you're choosing between a risky goal and a safe one, what if you said to yourself, "I'm going to go for this audacious goal because I want to. I think I have a shot and I want to see what's possible. I want to reach." Because it's not about hitting the outcome or not. It's about reaching for something you want and seeing what's possible. And that is the only choice where you grow your identity as an ultra runner. So, just to sum it up, here are how the numbers work.
If you aim for 33, are you likely to get 36? Nope. If you aim for 36, are you likely to get 33? Absolutely. Are you likely to see what you can do if you aim for 33? No, you’re just going to hit 33. Are you likely to see what you can do if you aim for 36, even if you don't hit it? Yes, absolutely. When you go for the bigger goal that you want, even a miss pays off because choosing a goal is about far more than the black and white outcome, yes or no, whether you hit the number or not. It's about how you see yourself and what your actions prove about that long before you ever get in the race.
Choosing a goal is your chance to make it safe to go for what you want, to decide ahead of time that you'll feel more proud that you dared to go for a big goal that you want whether you hit it or not. This moment, this choice of goal sets the tone and the belief for the whole rest of the race. So don't default to the safe goal, and especially don't default automatically. Listen to what you actually want and stand by it and bet on yourself. Yes, you might fail at that bigger goal. It can happen, but the gain of doing everything in your power to go for the goal that you really want far, far outweighs the cost of not reaching it.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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