Your Best Year Yet: A Different Way to Think About New Year Goals

By: Jocelyn Fredine, BKin, CAT(C)

A Different Way to Think About New Year Goals 

As runners, we’re conditioned to chase big milestones. In coaching, this is one of the most common places we see runners tie their confidence to a single outcome. A new year often brings ambitious to-dos: a new personal best, or a qualification standard. If they are all you think about, they can leave you frustrated or anxious when factors beyond your control show up on race day. 

They’re also fragile. Not because runners aren’t prepared, but because performance lives inside a system with a lot of moving parts.

As runners, we don’t always like to admit how much of race day sits outside our control. Weather. Illness. Life stress. Travel delays. The pacing decisions of the pack around you. You can do everything “right” and still miss the outcome you set your sights on.

That’s where process goals come in. We talk about this early with athletes, because understanding this upfront tends to reduce a lot of unnecessary pressure later in a training cycle.

Why Process Goals Matter More Than You Think

In sport psychology, process goals are consistently linked to better performance and stronger confidence than outcome goals alone (Kwasnicka et al., 2024).

Not because outcomes don’t matter, but because execution is what athletes can train and repeat. When runners trust their ability to carry out the work in front of them, they tend to stay more consistent, make better decisions, adjust appropriately, and stay engaged when training gets hard.

That’s why we anchor training around behaviours and execution long before race-day outcomes are finalized.

What Process Goals Look Like for Runners

Process goals shift the focus from what you want to achieve to how you show up each day in training. In practice, these are the behaviours we consistently come back to when athletes feel stuck, anxious, or unsure how training is going. 

For runners, this can include:

• executing workouts at the intended effort, rather than chasing numbers

• maintaining consistency across the training week, even when motivation fluctuates

• prioritizing recovery behaviours like sleep, fueling, nutrition and mobility alongside mileage

• managing training load and intensity so fitness can actually accumulate.

These are all controllable actions. They don’t depend on who else shows up on the start line or what the weather does on race morning.

Research shows that process goals help athletes focus on what they’re doing in the moment, rather than getting pulled toward outcomes that can increase anxiety or distraction. (Weinberg & Gould, 2019). For runners, self-regulation means knowing when to push, when to hold back, and how to adapt when training doesn’t go as planned. (McCormick et al., 2015). Those skills tend to matter far more over a long build than any single standout workout.

How to Set Process-Based Goals This Year

If you’re used to writing down a single big race goal in January, try this instead.This is the approach we’ve found gives runners more stability across an entire build, not just on good weeks.  Start by identifying the pieces that would make achieving that goal more likely. For example:

Instead of:

“Run a sub-4 marathon.”

Consider process goals like:

• completing 90 percent of scheduled long runs feeling controlled and fuelled,

• maintaining even pacing during marathon-pace workouts,

• consistently prioritizing recovery during peak training weeks,

• following a strength routine that supports fatigue resistance late in races.

These goals create a framework for decision-making. They give you something constructive to come back to when motivation dips or training doesn’t unfold exactly as planned.

Importantly, process goals are flexible. They can evolve as your season unfolds, which aligns with what we know about effective self-regulation in endurance sport. Runners who regularly reflect on and adjust their goals tend to maintain better engagement and performance over time (McCormick et al., 2015).

The Finish Line Still Matters, Just Not First

Outcome goals aren’t useless. They can provide direction and meaning. The key is not letting them be the only thing guiding your training. When the process is solid, outcomes often take care of themselves. When the outcome becomes the sole focus, runners are more likely to push too hard, ignore early warning signs, make poor decisions or feel defeated when reality doesn’t match the plan.

If you want to dig deeper into this idea, Coach Lynsey explores it beautifully in a past Women Run Canada podcast episode on goal setting. She speaks to both the emotional side of goal pursuit and the practical realities runners face over the course of a season. You can listen to the full episode at: https://womenruncanada.libsyn.com/ep-183-lynsey-romano

As you step into a new year of training, consider asking yourself a different question. Not “What do I want to achieve?” but “What kind of runner do I need to be, consistently, to give myself the best chance?”

It’s a question that tends to hold up even when training isn’t linear.

That’s where real progress tends to live.

References 

Kwasnicka, D., et al. (2024). The performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 72, 102621. 

McCormick, A., Meijen, C., & Marcora, S. (2015). Psychological determinants of whole-body endurance performance. Sports Medicine, 45(7), 997–1015. 

Weinberg, R. S., & Gould, D. (2019). Foundations of sport and exercise psychology (7th ed.). Human Kinetics.