How close are you to where you wanted to be?
- Emma O'Toole
- 27 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Many runners and cyclists set ambitious goals at the start of the year, but as training progresses, real life often changes what is realistic or sustainable. Work, family commitments, injury setbacks, and time constraints can all affect consistency and progress. This article explores how to reflect on your training, reassess your goals, and adjust them to better fit your current lifestyle. Emma O’Toole explains why adapting your goals is not failure, but a key part of long-term progress in endurance sport.
Strength training for runners and cyclists over 30 is a game-changer for performance, resilience, and long-term health.
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TRAINING BREAKDOWN
"A goal that fits your life will always outlast one that doesn't."
By Emma O'Toole
Hi there!
It is bank holiday weekend in the UK at the time of writing this blog post and Q1 is done.
Before you start training next week, I want to ask you something.
Cast your mind back to January.
You probably had a goal, maybe it was written down, maybe it was just a feeling, a distance you wanted to run, a ride you wanted to complete, a time you wanted to beat, a version of yourself you wanted to become by the end of 2026.
How close are you to it right now?
This has been the conversation in the BUILT TO ENDURE free coaching group for runners and cyclists over 30 this week, and it has been a very honest thread.
A few themes kept coming up.
Some members had barely started. Not because they lacked motivation in January, but because life had other plans: work got busy, kids got ill. The routine they had imagined never quite materialised. Q1 had slipped by and the goal felt further away than it did in January.
Others had been consistent but kept getting pulled back by their body. A calf that tightened every time mileage crept up, a lower back injury that flared up, an Achilles that never quite settled. They had not stopped training out of choice. Their body had made that decision for them. Q1 had been more about managing niggles than building towards the goal. And for most of them, strength training had never really made it onto the plan.
And then there was a third group. Runners and cyclists who had set big goals in January, long distances, ambitious events, things that sounded exciting at the time, but had slowly realised that the training those goals demand does not fit the life they are actually living. The long runs were eating into family time. The long rides were taking up entire weekend days. The goal had started to feel like a burden rather than something to look forward to.
Every single one of those conversations felt real and familiar because I hear versions of them regularly.
Here is what I don't think gets said enough: it is okay to change the goal.
This has nothing to do with failure or not being good enough. The goal you set in January was set by an aspirational version of you, one that did not yet know what the next three months would look like. Changing a goal is not quitting. It is honest coaching of yourself, because goals are not contracts, they are starting points.
Sifan Hassan, 2024 Olympic marathon gold medallist, has recently withdrawn from the London Marathon with an Achilles injury. The best athletes in the world adapt their plans when their body asks them to. That is not weakness or failure, it is experience.
The runners and cyclists I see make the most progress over time choose goals that genuinely fit their life, their commitments, and the training they can actually sustain week after week because a goal that fits your life will always outlast one that doesn't.
If you signed up for a marathon because it felt like the right thing to do in January but you are dreading the long runs, that is worth paying attention to.
If you planned a big cycling event but the training volume is creating friction with everything else you care about, that is information.
It does not mean you cannot do those things. It might just mean not right now, or not in the way you originally planned.
Whether you're reading this on a bank holiday at the end of Q1 or not, I want to leave you with this:
If you stripped away what you thought you should be training for, and just asked yourself what kind of runner or cyclist you actually want to be right now, in this season of your life, what would the answer be?
There is no right or wrong answer, but it is worth thinking about.
It is something I come back to again and again: train as the athlete you are today, for who you want to be tomorrow.
If you want to have that conversation with a community of runners and cyclists who are asking themselves exactly the same question, the BUILT TO ENDURE free coaching community is the place for it. It is a free group of over 780 runners and cyclists over 30, one of the most honest and supportive spaces I know of for endurance athletes who are trying to train consistently, stay healthy, and keep improving alongside real life.
Happy running and riding!
Emma x
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