Jalana...

I am a believer in both long-term goals as well as capitalizing on opportunities as they present themselves.

I feel in order to be successful in any avenue or venture, goals are important. In order for me to say that I want to go to the Olympics again or something like that, I have to set the gears in motion now to set that up in a few years. You're not going to be able to roll of your couch in the spring of 2012 and say "Hey, I think I am going to shoot for the Olympics." More often than not, you won't achieve that because if it were that easy to do, your goal wasn't challenging enough to be a goal in the first place.

I set long term goals that are difficult to achieve because if something were easy, everybody would do it.

Opportunities that come about by chance are equally as important. I have had several chance meetings/opportunities that presented themselves that allowed me to capitalize on a long term goal I set for myself. The most important of these were when I met my current coach Brooks Johnson out in Sacramento in 2004. Without such a meeting/opportunity, it's no telling what I may be doing right now. I may have met another coach without as much knowledge and been out of the sport by now.

Great question