Sunday, December 8, 2013

The Struggle


After all those warm-weather-in-December comments that I made, our temperature dropped from 70 degrees to upper 20's overnight.  Mother Nature thinks she's funny.  

My running this week has been almost non-existent.  I have the motivation to run, I just don't have the time.  (I say that loosely.  If I had MORE motivation, I guess I would get up at 4am to run each morning, but that's not happening!)  

I took Monday off after Sunday's long run.  I did 3.5 miles on the treadmill on Tuesday and 3 miles on Wednesday.  When I missed Thursday's run, I shrugged it off.  NBD.  Then I missed Friday's. 

I was signed up for a 5K on Saturday morning--one that I had actually payed for--and skipped it.  The run was at 8 am and K was in a Christmas parade that started at 9:30.  Techinically, I probably could have squeezed in both but it was too much rushing for me, so I ditched the race.  Then, this morning's long run didn't happen.  There really is no excuse, other than the weather predicted a 70% chance of rain at 5am and I believed the forecast.  Just so you know, it wasn't raining at 5am, but I didn't get out of bed.

When I finally rolled out of bed this morning, I started to get a little stressed.  I am in the middle of half marathon training again, and really want to do well in this race at the end of January.  I NEED those runs to get me ready.  But after a few minutes of a pity party, I reminded myself that I LOVE running.  I do it because it is FUN for me.  If I let myself stress over missed workouts, its not going to keep being fun.  Yes, the training is important.  But this is also December, the most busy month of the year.

So this morning, I made an important decision.  There will be ZERO stressing over running this month.  If I'm able to get the workout in, GREAT!  If not, that's ok too.  I'm sure I'll be able to run enough that I don't lose any fitness, and then I'll have the whole month of January to work at getting faster.  

The point of all this rambling is this----> Working out should be FUN!  If you don't like what you are doing, find something else that you do enjoy.  Don't stress over missed workouts (unless your days turn into weeks, that turn into months...then you might need to reconsider!).  

And if you need more encouragement, you can read Presley's post here or this post about falling in love with running.




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