How bad do you want it?

When setting goals in life, this is the “killer question”.  Everything else takes second place.  Whether it be climbing the career ladder, planning your retirement or running your first 5/10/21/42 km race this is the key question because if you don’t “want it bad” then when the going gets tough you will struggle.
The Kms are starting to build with my first race of the season approaching in 5 weeks time.  It’s a tough 53 mile / 85km ultra on the West Highland Way with 7,500 ft / 2,300m of climbing.  This weekend has been unusual as I’ve been concentrating on shorter 1 hour runs but with pace.  The fact that they’re shorter doesn’t mean they are easy as the increase in speed feels alien but these are important sessions.  The next two weeks involve some of my longest runs to date and mountain runs where I shred my quads on the way down to replicate what the conditions will be like on the ultra.  I’ve also to fit this around a couple of London trips but it has to be done because “I want it bad”!
After today’s run I met with my coach to go over my schedule between now and the race.  We made a few alterations to the plan but all the statistics are pointing in the right direction which is encouraging.  More planning is required to make sure I fuel properly during the race because it’s easy to get this wrong and all the training in the world won’t get you through running “on empty”.
I’ll be talking to a group of Vistage CEOs next week about this subject.  They are “corporate athlete’s” and their approach should be no different from training for an ultra.  After all, running a successful business isn’t a sprint.  It’s far more like an extreme ultra in my own personal experience.
So when thinking about your goals remember and ask yourself, how bad do you want it?