Motivation

Two questions came to me before this post. I wonder what other's responses would be...
1. What do you do when your motivation for running wanes?

2. What do you do when work becomes the priority and running inevitably and sadly takes a back seat because as much as you love running; you need a job to continue living?

I will address the 2nd question first because it is my post and I can do what I want (for the time being). These past few months my running hasn't been as consistent due to work and coaching a sport. I have run off and on at 2 am on a treadmill but that doesn't do much good. I also try to run on the weekends but am typically so exhausted from the week that it is all I can do to just get out of bed. I have basically two options: continue as I am or become (shudder) a morning runner. I have avoided and fought this for years because I have always been a night runner and because I am definitively not a morning person. I guess the time has come for a change. To all my South Carolinian friends that run. I may need your assistance for motivation to get my ass out of bed and run.

The 1st question is directly related to the 2nd question for me. I haven't been able to run as much as I normally do so I haven't wanted to run as much as I normally do. I have even looked for excuses not to run "it's raining" or "it's too late" Has anyone else gone through a stale period of running? What did you do to get out of the rut? I'm asking because while I still love running; it has just been difficult to get back to doing it regularly.
 I've tried registering for a race but that didn't make me run more; just accept I wasn't going to go as fast and finish.

(This picture is from a half marathon I completed 2 weeks ago despite only having run 3 times in the previous 2 weeks).
I've thought about changing my running routine (described above) but haven't successfully managed that yet. I figure my recent injuries are also playing a part in my mind because I don't want to get injured again. I've wanted to run group runs with the local running club but they don't have group runs when I am able to run. It seems that for every possible motivator I have an excuse.

At Thanksgiving I heard an interesting comment from someone in my family. My aunt said "Are you going to start running again?" I asked her how she knew I wasn't running and she said that several people were able to tell based on my facebook posts. She said that I was more negative in my tone when I wasn't running. I will continue trying to break my running rut and let you know how it goes. I promise not to let two months pass before I post again. Stay tuned

Returning from Injury

Almost every runner I know has gotten injured and I'm no exception. Since I began running regularly a little over 2 years ago I've experienced my share of sprained left ankles, plantar fasciitis, and pinched nerves. Typically I attempt to run through the injury and this has led to another. For example when I first started running 2 years ago, I got my first case of plantar fasciitis. I taped it and continued running because I was only 5 weeks away from my first marathon and then sprained my ankle.

The common doctor response for injuries is rest or more specifically RICE. I am usually been given exercises to rehab from the injury and during that time I am usually good about regularly completing the exercises. Then as soon as it stops hurting I stop doing the exercises. This time though I am determined to keep up with the exercises and recuperate from this most recent injury.

I have sprained my ankle before and know that I will always be susceptible to further injury but once again I return to running but this time I am going to attempt to prevent it. I am running the Goofy Challenge in January at Walt Disney World but I have decided the real goal is the Tobacco Road Marathon in March. I will attempt to run a 3:05 and qualify for the Boston Marathon.

A picture of me after the Louisville Marathon and a then PR of 4:13:12. Setting my sights on Boston.

Balance

Life is about balance and running is an important part of maintaining that balance for me. I run to release stress. I run to work out my problems. I run to get away from people. I run to meditate. I run to pray. Each run is not all of these things and yet sometimes I struggle to achieve just one of those things during a run.

Recently my life has been thrown out of balance due to a change at work and I have been trying for 9 weeks to regain some of that balance and finally feel like I am making some progress. This is finally allowing me to enjoy running again instead of simply thinking about everything I need to do.

I have also stopped scheduling races so far in advance as that was putting too much pressure on me to be ready for them instead of just enjoying the run. That is not to say that parts of the races weren't enjoyable or memorable; the 3 miles of continuous uphill in the Charleston 15 miler and the first time I've done a run that was not runnable for me at the Table Rock 15k stand out in my mind but even when I was racing I was thinking about everything through work I still needed to do.

My hope is that I am going to find a balance between work and the rest of my life and in my next post I'll let you know how it's going. I will also write about any other running topic that comes up.

Racing

on Saturday, I ran in the Paris Mountain 7k Trail Race. My time was 33:28 and I finished somewhere between 15 and 20. I find it interesting that so many people care about their place at the end or if they are an age-group winner. The only thing that matters to me is if I felt I ran my best and that I finish. I was over 6 minutes faster than last year when I ran a 39:38 over the same course so it was also nice to see an improvement from last year.

Weekly Mileage - 18 miles
Notes: I missed running on Friday and Wednesday this week.
Notable Workouts: Thursday Evening Run - Tempo Run on the Treadmill. I ran 35 minutes at 8.6 mph pace with a 2.0 incline. 

Next weekend is the Table Rock 15k in Table Rock National Park.

First Post

Hello I guess. I'm not sure exactly how I will use this space but for those of you who follow my running posts on facebook, this will be somewhere else you can do that. I don't have anything to post right now except I only did 1 run this past week of 10 miles. As I sit here; I can tell that I haven't been running enough this past week and hopefully next week things can get back to normal.

Later,