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I a also agree with Andrew's approach.  And i mean i agree 100% , i couldn't have written it better, or even that good, trying to express my own POV on this.
Just 2 quick notes : 1) it is a matter of personality too. This approach suits me perfectly but im a big time procrastinator. 2) In that approach, there will always be a lot of "what if?"s. Even when you achieve targets, you always wonder what u could reach if fully committed. You gotta be able to live with that.

i think i've written about this before on here but if so it was years ago, so: this is the reason i started down the dunking path in the first place 10+ years ago. got to the end of college realizing that i'd never really gone balls-out at a really difficult goal. i got a BA and went to the junior olympics and got a job, had friends, had had girlfriends, but basically by coasting on my privileges and whatever natural gifts i have. i'd never really committed to ultimate, so i wasn't that great at it. my family couldn't afford for me to really commit to fencing, so i topped out by going 1-4 and finishing ~160th out of ~200 at the JOs. i was a B or B+ student in high school because my work ethic was, shall we say, average. but i did some neat extracurriculars and crushed the SAT (a garbage test designed to reward people like me) so got into a good university.

one of my good friends in college was a straight-A student who worked relentlessly hard. she applied herself diligently to school and also got involved in some organizing stuff. at some point in college, comparing myself to her, i self-diagnosed as a coward. i started to understand not working hard is a defense mechanism: if i can do well enough at X or Y without pouring myself into it, well, i'm sure i could have aced it like those other people if i'd just worked harder. or if i do badly at it, then i could have done well enough if i'd tried. dunking was a goal that i knew i would have to work very hard and very doggedly at if i had any hope of reaching it. in other words, i'd have to fully commit. i suppose it helped that it had no extrinsic value.

in retrospect, i think "cowardice" is probably too harsh or too judgmental a word. and the fact of the matter is, if my parents could have paid for more coaching, i doubt i'd have reached the elite tier anyway. i'm just not that athletic. if i'd studied harder in high school or college, what benefit would have accrued to me that i didn't get from my B+ GPA? i might have become a marginal elite ultimate player, actually, because the pool is still relatively small and if you've got great skills you can overcome a lack of speed. but i'd never have been a star.

the thing is, i'm a basically happy person. part of me wishes i was more crazily committed to a particular goal, there's something romantic and amazing about people who just go for it 100%. but i'm just not. and i'm not sure i'd trade my general contentment for the drive to be exceptionally great at something.

point being, i'm learning to live with the "what ifs." playing guitar is a case in point: i'm a true beginner in my mid-30s, and wouldn't it be nice if i'd started 20 years ago? but i didn't, and it's okay. similar with running. wouldn't it be nice if i didn't have so many other interests, or if i were naturally faster, or if i weren't so injury prone, or if i were willing to sacrifice more to keep to a strict schedule? well, no (except the injury part), and in any case it's a moot point. i am who i am. the dunk journey did teach me to be more disciplined and more dogged, and it inspired in me the desire to be really fit. but it didn't fundamentally change my personality.

- warm up; 800s x 2.5 (3:03, 3:02, xxx); cool down
very windy, lungs felt filled up and i was slowing down substantially on the third rep. just felt off. bailed.

- stretch

Mate I feel your pain. In the past I have always filled my plate too full and as a consequence I don't get the best out of anything. I also often found that I would detour from something just when I needed to double down and get a breakthrough. My 2c is to suck it up, recommit and go for the 18:xx.

yeah it happened when i was working on dunking, too. i'd be like, i know what i need to do! sprint more! and then waste a year on that shit. i'm slow as dirt and sprinting is hard on your body, what was i thinking?

alright that's one vote for 18:xx.

I've noticed you seem to have headaches quite frequently. Have you always had these or have they just started occurring recently?

it's a lifelong thing. they tend to come in waves, like i'll go months without a bad one and then get a bunch in a short period of time.

- run 47:58, 9.76 km
kept it short. more later on why.

- stretch

- run 1:36, 16.47 km
mom biked alongside, mainly kept to rock creek park. we had to walk right after the turnaround point because she couldn't make it up the very steep hill right there. very lovely, nice and relaxed (5:50 average pace), shorter than sundays should be but it's okay.

and, just like that, this morning i'm leaning towards taking it. i've been looking around to see what else is out there and this really is a good offer: the job is senior enough that it doesn't feel like backsliding (although it's a bit lateral). it would be a big raise over any salary i've made before. it would introduce me to new geographies and new ways of doing things. on the career path i've been on so far, it's about as good an offer as i'd be likely to get. i've got a call with the recruiter in an hour to talk about whether they'd let me do four tens instead of a normal work week, which would free up an extra day per week to pursue other things.

on the other hand, the objection about it cutting off my ability to pursue a whole other trajectory full-time, to explore in a really open-ended way, is still there. i do not need the money right now. same for the objection that i know, now, that i don't want to be a proposal writer for the rest of my life, and this represents more time doing that full-time. this job doesn't have to determine the rest of my career, obviously -- i've probably got another 30 years of working life ahead of me -- but it's a step in that direction.

at the same time, given that i'm still so hazy on what else i'd rather be doing professionally, it makes sense to take it and then to get more focused in my spare time about exploring this and that, having conversations, coming up with research questions, and organizing locally. having all my time to myself has been really nice but it also makes it very easy to procrastinate and stay shapeless. i'm pretty self-disciplined but i've found it hard over the past couple of months to get the ball rolling on these questions and explorations. in fairness to myself, i have done some of that, had a couple of informational interviews. but when i talked with my professor back in the summer, he suggested i come up with some two-page concept notes for research projects and try to shop them around to different NGOs. i haven't even begun to do that.

like, what if i take the job but have as a medium-term goal -- within the next 12-18 months, say -- a collaborative research project that i could leave this organization to do full-time for a while? and in the meantime, forge some connections and maybe try to tack myself onto other folks's research projects by basically volunteering to help with technical editing, coding, whatever. get some experience and grow my network in a new direction that way.

i dunno, maybe i should take the job. worse comes to worst i really do hate it and leave after three months. best case scenario, the people are great and i'm learning new stuff and i have time and motivation on the side to start looking around.

yarr.

re: cardio, maybe try incline walking on the treadmill? that's something i know lyle used to recommend for bodybuilding. boring but you could, like, read a book.

- run 1:04:09, 12.83 km
glorious if slightly cold day (upper 40s). went a little long because i ended up in a neighborhood i've never explored on foot and could not find a convenient place to turn around without just doubling back, which seemed too boring.

- stretch

got offered a job today. ambivalent about it, had been leaning against taking it if offered but now that it's on the table i'm really tempted. have until tomorrow to let them know.