running motivation

I’d like to introduce you to Slob; who moved in when Motivation moved out. He’s a lazy, miserable procrastinator and a whinge-bag who drives me crazy, and it’s starting to tick me off.

Seriously, I’ve been having a real tough time trying to get Motivation back and Slob off his butt and out the front door, and it has been an upward struggle.

It all started when I finished my half marathon – in style I might add – but with bad shin splints. That’s what drove me to look for a solution, which is why I created DinoDerm calf sleeves, and also because they help lots of people with similar pain.

I had no choice but to follow orders and take time off to recover and give my shins time to heal. I used to lift weights a lot prior to picking up running, and so my days would be spent throwing stuff like this around for hours, but that’s a story for another time. 🙂

Anyway, the problem with taking injury time off is that the longer the time off the quicker motivation slips away. Well, in my case anyway…

If you read this site often you’ll know that I spend a lot of time finding tools to keep motivated; whether it’s mixing up runs with different workouts, testing new running shoes and gear, practicing running drills to improve my form or reading the words of running legends past and present. But for the life of me nothing that I had used successfully before would get me up and out of the door.

Ok so I have gone running a few times, about six runs in two months – that’s pretty pathetic! :-/

We’ve all experience this kind of feeling before and it’s really easy to just throw in the towel and give up when we feel this way; I reckon that’s why so many people fail in maintaining an exercise program or sticking to a healthy diet especially when we’ve been so used to living a sedentary life – it’s easy to slip back into it.

The reasons why I lost motivation are not the point here but I am delving deeper into the why and how and I might write about that later. But ultimately running for me is a spiritual experience and I think that understanding ourselves intrinsically is important for growth.

What is important is that I never break the promise I made to myself when I decided to change my life to a healthy one. And although I have stood still on the running road I haven’t given up. How do I know that? Because if I had given up you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

The moment you decide not to break your promise and you act on your decision – that’s when you stop letting yourself down.

So I’m getting back out there, I ran twice in three days which is better than anything I’ve done in these past two months – and I’m pretty stoked about it.

If this sounds familiar, then let’s kick Slob to the curb and run with Motivation once again!