You absolutely don’t need goals to become a runner. I always preach this as a passionate runner who achieved a fairly high level for my age group. All of my habit building, and improvement came without goal setting. The results of my races were the outcome of consistency, not goal setting. On the opposite - goals often put you on the path to frustration and quitting because you face setbacks. Only when you’re advanced, goals become more important. The same applies to other endeavors (writing for example). When you are starting out, I highly recommend avoiding goal setting