When a big race comes around, you can also set several tiers of goals. I think of them as the “A,” “B,” “C,” and sometimes even “D” goals. The “A” goal is the dream, not the best day of your life ever, perhaps, but a darn good one. The “B” is more modest but still good enough to make for a satisfying day, given race conditions and your present state of training. If you set B goals correctly, you ought to hit them more often than not. The “C” is a backup. OK, it wasn’t a great day, but that sometimes happens. The “D” is a red flag. If you don’t do at least that well—and there isn’t an obvious explanation, like a giant head wind or a course that all the Garmins are showing as long—you might want to get a blood check for low iron, review your training log for signs of overtraining, or otherwise reassess.

The point isn’t to set goals that make you feel bad if you don’t hit them but ones that give you information related to your long-term plan, whether that information is “Wow, hurrah!” or “Yow, something’s wrong and I need to figure out what it is.” Part of long-term planning is to view races not as measures of your worth as a person but as information—knowledge that can be folded into future planning.

Time out

Every fall, Bernard Lagat takes a five-week break. “Rest is a good thing,” he told The Wall Street Journal last year. During that period, he added, he typically gains about 8 pounds—no problem, because he trains them off again before he reaches peak racing shape, anyway.

Other (smart) athletes force themselves to take shorter rest breaks twice a year, even though it defies that ingrained voice that’s scared of getting out of shape.

Michael Lebowitz/Long Run Pictures

If you don’t do this occasionally, you’ll stagnate, says Greer. “You can’t just go from one thing to the next to the next, or 10 years later you’ll be burned out.”

I tell my own runners to take a minimum of two weeks totally off after a marathon . . . and then a minimum of two more to building back to base-level training. The first time I told an elite marathoner to do that, I thought she would rebel. But she didn’t, and seven weeks later she clipped two minutes off her halfmarathon PR. Trust that when you come back from the break, you really will still be the runner you were before . . . but rested and ready to go. “Time off resets the body,” says Andrew Begley.

Amy Begley adds that even the weight gain during a rest break can be a good thing. “This goes against a lot of people’s thought processes,” she says. “However, especially for women who tend to be very lean and become amenorrheic, the weight gain can help restart the hormones and give the bones a boost of protection.”

Rest can even turn a minor setback into a blessing. As an example, Greer cites Gerry Lindgren, who in the 1960s “was training like a madman,” trying to break the world record for six miles. He ran so hard, Greer says, that he wound up in the hospital. “He was sidelined for a week. Then he gets out and breaks the record.”

Technically, he tied the record with Billy Mills, who was in the same race and beat him on the lean (while clocking the identical time). But the point is clear. “He probably wouldn’t have done it if he’d continued on the path he was on,” Greer says.

Stay the course

One of the main benefits of long-term goal setting is immunizing yourself from day-to-day emotional swings. “Stay patient,” says Greer. “It’s not going to come right away. If you’re under a good coach or a good program, it’s going to work for you eventually.”

Cournane says much the same. “Just like a marathon is a long-term endurance event,” he points out, “improved performance is often a long-term event. Most runners don’t really learn how to run the marathon until their fourth or fifth.”

Amy Begley adds that Andrew’s college coach used to tell his athletes that it takes a year in a new program to start seeing the results.

“The point [is] not to think of how much better you want to get this year,” says Daniels. “Sometimes things come around more slowly than you would like.”

Be versatile

This one comes hard for marathoners, who tend to disdain shorter distances. But in 2008, Kara Goucher won the indoor mile at the Millrose Games—one of the best indoor-track competitions in the nation.