Several weeks ago, I talked about the importance of authenticity in running and in writing. This week, I’m excited to bring you a very special series of insightful and inspiring running articles written by four women who epitomize what it means to be authentic. While I’m off the grid hiking, rafting and camping this week, their voices will fill these pages – reminding us about important lessons in life and in running.

Our first authentic voice is from Laura Norris, a running coach, blogger, outdoor enthusiast, distance runner and Midwest transplant living in Seattle, Washington. Laura writes about running, hiking and food on her blog This Runner’s Recipes, which has become a favorite running resource for me. Laura has a passion for helping runners achieve their goals through healthy eating and research-backed training. When she’s not running, coaching, hiking or writing about her adventures, she loves to head to the mountains with her husband Ryan and their adventurous puggle named Charlie. Friends, meet Laura as she opens up today on the power of letting go of our goals.

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Hi, I’m Laura. I am a goal setter. Goals manifest in my mind like words upon a page, and then morph into a fire burning deep in my bones. Some may call me single-minded. If I miss a goal, I pick myself up, analyze what I did wrong and try again, repeating the process until I succeed.

Sometimes this fire can become consuming, as those of you who set and chase goals can relate. A goal that once provided motivation suddenly becomes a source of stress.

I have come to believe that letting go is part of the art of achieving goals. You don’t want to let go as in wave a white flag and forget your goal; rather you let go of the fixation upon the end result, the worries and what ifs, and immerse yourself in the process and journey.

Today, I want to describe the ways in which I firmly believe your running will benefit from letting go of a sole focus on time goals. But first, so you don’t think I’m crazy or someone who doesn’t care at all about goals, let me share with you my story

There’s a bitter truth about running that many of us choose to ignore: with setting goals comes missing goals. After running a 1:46 at my first half marathon in fall 2014, I set the goal of running a sub-1:40 half marathon and a BQ (Boston Qualify) marathon. Go big or go home, right? I missed both of these goals in 2015. I crashed and burned at my second half marathon, and my marathon was wrecked by an upset stomach.

Rather than having power over my goals, I had allowed my goals to have power over me, to determine my happiness and satisfaction with my running. I wasn’t happy with my races nor was I proud of my times, even if they were objectively good times.

I set similar goals for 2016, but then I let go of them. I still wanted to achieve them, but a light bulb went off in my head that achievement of goals is never forced. Instead, I focused on working from where I was, training hard, mentally preparing for races and enjoying the journey. I still aimed for that sub-1:40 half, but once I began training, I let go of that goal. If it happened for my spring half marathon, then it happened; but if I missed that time, well, I wanted to be proud of my effort and have enjoyed the training and the race. Sub-1:40 or not, that mattered more.

And so I did; I tucked that goal away and focused on my training. I took a different approach; rather than stressing about hitting every pace, I tuned into my body and trained based on perceived effort. Instead of worrying how a week-long trip to London would affect my training, I ate, drank and explored my way with my husband through one of my favorite cities, fitting in short runs only twice on the trip.

On race day, I started slow. I listened to my body’s signals of effort, trusted my training and above all trusted myself. A smartly run race mattered more than the time on the clock. I let the 1:40 pacers run far ahead of me; by mile 8 I passed them. I finished the race with a smile on my face, hands raised in victory, as I crossed the finish line in 1:38:40.

By letting go of my goal, I released myself from self-imposed pressure, learned to enjoy the journey and found myself capable of more than I could have believed when setting my goals. As a coach to other runners, I have noticed the same results when I encourage my athletes to focus on the journey rather than obsessing over time goals: they enjoy training, race well, avoid injury more frequently and more often than not surprise themselves along the way.

What happens exactly when you release yourself from the pressure of a strict time goal for a race?

You learn to trust yourself.

A few years ago, training based on perceived effort unnerved me. I am data-minded person, a daughter and wife of engineers who loves running in part because of all of the numbers and data feedback. How would I know if I was training hard enough without goal paces to hit?

Here’s the catch: your body does not know pace, it simply knows effort. A 7:30 min/mile pace may be half marathon pace for me now, but for some runners it is an easy day pace, and for other runners it’s a pace only seen in hard speed workouts. Effort, on the other hand, remains the same, even as you gain or lose fitness.

Matt Fitzgerald’s popular book on endurance sports psychology, How Bad Do You Want It?, features a chapter titled “The Answer is Within You.” That simple concept profoundly transformed my approach to training and racing, as it should for you. The answer to achieving your goals, to enjoying your running and to doing well in your next race lies not in a pace chart, one particular workout or a specific time on the clock: the answer to how to train well lies within you.

Your body knows what effort feels right for each workout. Your body knows how many miles per week produce the most improvements and how many miles per week would lead to over-training. Running based on perceived effort and intuition requires trust in your body. At times, trusting your body and gauging effort can be more mentally demanding than following a pace on your Garmin. But over time, this technique will improve your confidence.

You find joy in the journey.

I genuinely enjoyed my previous training cycle so much more than any training cycles I did in 2015. Why? Because I released myself from the pressure of a goal and let myself enjoy the training.

When you enjoy your training and workouts, you do them more consistently. Without self-imposed pressure or a sense of dread going into any run, you often find you still push yourself when you need to, but that without the mental fatigue of stress, you more easily hit faster paces. The joy of running, which first beckoned you to lace up your shoes, returns without the overwhelming pressure of a particular goal time.

You maintain appropriate priorities.

There emerges the temptation, particularly when you begin training for a formidable race such as a marathon or ultra, to throw everything you have into training.

When your priorities are rightly ordered, everything else falls into place. No matter how big your goal, a race is only that: just a single race. Too often, when you become very focused on one goal, your life begins to revolve around nothing but running a very particular finish time. Life continues during training, so live life and find a way to balance training with family, career and fun. Chances are, you will still be more than capable of completing your workouts in training and of running a strong and smart race; but you won’t come to resent training or feel mentally burned out.

Consistency is what matters in success. As long as you’re completing roughly 85 percent of your workouts as prescribed, give yourself the room to live. Because after you cross the finish line, whether or not you achieved your goal, what will really matter? The journey and the process, not just the finish.

Have you ever let go of your goals and surprised yourself in a race? Tell us about it. What resonated most with you from Laura’s authentic words?