My Running Journal, 020310

So I failed to meet two goals this morning, and I chalk it up to a lack of motivation.

I woke up at 0550, and then let the alarm tell me when to get out of bed. I charted a path that was a little over 3 miles, got put together for the run, and headed out. Into a light, cold rain.

This morning was a tough one - I woke up feeling fine, but knowing that I was scheduled to run 3 miles, which to me is a long way, I wasn't very motivated. The "3 miles is a long way" is a difficult mental block - before I joined the Corps, I had never run for more than a mile. I was a sprinter. A mile seemed like a long, long way (even though I was bicycling 7 miles to work/gymnastics in High School).

It is funny to me how you get a distance stuck in your head, and that becomes the insurmountable odd. Intellectually, I know that 3 miles is basically nothing, especially since I plan on running 26 miles in one go. And it isn't like I haven't run further than 3 miles in a single run before. I have.

But all of the times that I have bothered to run farther than 3 miles, I have had other people with me. People that I could talk with, whine about the distance with, and generally stay motivated. It helps me immensely to have another person running with me. Running by myself gets to be boring, and then the negativity creeps in. Which slows you down, or stops you entirely.

So this morning I was supposed to run 3 miles. I failed to meet that goal by about 170 feet - my route totaled 2.97 miles. And I finished in 33 minutes. Beside being a slow, slow pace, I stopped to walk around the 2 mile mark, and walked for probably 1/2 a mile. And I probably didn't have to - but I was cold, tired from waking up early and achey. Raining on me, gait feels funny, "Oh, ouch! uh, my hip hurts, yeah - that's a good reason to stop running."

The other goal that I failed to meet, and this is more important right now than the mileage, is to not stop running.

I basically allowed my negativity to perform an inertia creep on me. Part of me doesn't care about running, or staying shape, or fuck all, and that part of me has undermined almost everything that I have done in life. It popped up as soon as I awoke - that disappointment and not quit dread that almost kept me in bed. It popped up when I realized that I needed to put on a raincoat. got a little stronger in my head when I realized that I needed to actually run with my hood up. At the end of the second block, the monkey was ooking "screw this." I made the first mile, reminding myself that it normally takes me about a mile and half to push past the complaining little monkey.

And then at mile 2, it won. This is where having another person with you to motivate helps. Because, ideally, both people are working to motivate each other. To push a little farther, and to keep the pace up.
*Editted to add* I just read through this paragraph, and I realized that thinking this is again the negative inertia monkey talking. Yes, it is fun to have another person to work out with, and it does help, but to do what I intend to do, you have to be your own partner.*

I didn't need to slow down to a walk - I wasn't running very fast, and it isn't like I was on the verge of exhaustion/dehydration. I allowed the part of me that self-sabotages to do it this morning. Part of this training is to get away from that self sabotaging effort, and redirect all of my negativity into forward momentum. Because if I don't, then I won't even make it the first three miles.