Staying Motivated for Race 2

I’ll admit it.  I’m burning out a little.  I was so excited to run my first half marathon, so nervous, so pumped, that I got up at 5 a.m. to run, and didn’t skip or procrastinate on my long runs.  After running my first half, I took a week off, and then started right back in again because I’m signed up for the Chilly Half Marathon on November 10th.  Trouble is, I don’t really feel like it.

This race is causing me training problems for two reasons.  

1. I now know that I am capable of running 13.1 miles, so I have a little less motivation because I’m not trying to prove something to myself, and I’m less afraid of failure.  I’ve done this.

2. It no longer feels quite as much like an accomplishment just to finish… I worry that if I run a slower time, I won’t feel proud of myself.  This is crazy, because 13.1 is an amazing accomplishment, and I don’t have much time to train in between half marathons.  By the time I finished recovering, I was about a month away from needing to taper, and because I had worked so hard so recently, I wasn’t having as much fun pushing myself as I had the first time.  In order to cut minutes off my time, I need to train hard… because I put everything into that half marathon in September!  That’s tough to do when I’m pressed for time, tired, and burned out from training so hard in August.

This is a big problem for me, because I believe that running should be fun.  Once you hit the minimum amount of exercise to get health benefits and a positive mood lift, everything above and beyond that is a bonus that should be done because you’re enjoying the process.  If you’re really hating it, you risk burning out so much that you drop below what you should be doing in order to stay happy and healthy.  That’s a scary thought, and one that looms large with me since it wasn’t that long ago that I wasn’t a runner at all.  I don’t want to be that me again, I prefer the running me.

So, I figured there were two options.

1. Drop out of the race and figure out what I want running to do for me right now, and how I want it to fit into my life.  That might not mean devoting time to two hour long runs when I’d rather be making my child’s Halloween costume, and I should be meal planning or cleaning out the pantry.  (Which makes me wonder, what are the kids eating for breakfast since we’re out of milk for cereal.  Ack.)

2. Figure out what my motivation blocks are, and give my long runs another try.  After all, the race is basically a month away.  That’s only three more weeks of training… max.  I’m pretty sure I can do three long runs rather than drop out.

What was stopping me:

Problem 1. Time.  I was trying to go in the morning, when Will was at preschool and I had a babysitter for Andrew.  The trouble was that Will only has 2 hours and 15 minutes at preschool, which means that if you subtract travel time, I had less than two hours to run AND shower.  So I was running him to school in the stroller, running home, continuing to run, and all the while thinking about how hungry I was because I’d eaten a light breakfast so I could run, and how much stuff I had to do that day that I could be accomplishing while I had a sitter.

Solution: I switched to afternoon running.  First thing in the morning, all I want to do is cross things off my to-do list.  By the time 4 p.m. rolls around, all I want to do is run away from my to-do list (and, quite honestly, my kids) as fast as possible.  Perfect.  When I have a sitter on Wednesday afternoons, I’ll head out for a two hour run and shower while she feeds them dinner, then put them to bed and eat a grown-up meal with Greg.

Problem 2: Visual Boredom. Out of sheer convenience, I’d been running the same long run route.  It was an out and back, I didn’t get lost, I knew it was enough miles and there was lots of sidewalk, it worked.  But running that after my half marathon made me feel like I was right back to where I had started without making any progress.  I was tired of it.

Solution: New running route.  I mapped it out online, wrote directions on my hand, and went for it.  There was a stretch of road with breakdown lanes smaller than I would have liked, but it was GORGEOUS, it was different, and I didn’t dread the hills because I didn’t know they were coming.

Problem 3: Auditory Boredom. I had been listening to the Beatles on all my long runs, and as much as I love them, I needed to mix it up a little.  Often, I was so tired of listening to a different song every three minutes that I just ran in silence.  I decided to switch it up from music to an Audio Book, and I didn’t pick an Audio Book that the ideal version of me would read, like War and Peace or something, I picked something light and funny.  I got a Janet Evanovich book about a romantic Thanksgiving, and listening to it made the miles go by quickly.  I wasn’t even checking my pace on my watch, I was too distracted by the story, and the gorgeous fall scenery.  Definite win.

The verdict: 

I did my long run this afternoon of over 10 miles, and it went really well.

I’m still in this.  I’ll be running that half marathon on November 10th, and if I don’t run it faster than I ran the one in September, it’s because I was smart enough to pull back a little when I was at serious risk of burning out and quitting.  I would rather run it slowly than quit and not run it at all because I’m afraid I won’t PR.  Besides, it’s not like I haven’t been working hard.  I run up every hill, and I sprint up the last two hills of my run on my way home.  I’ve been pushing hard on some of my shorter runs, and I did my first interval workout.  I very well could PR, and I guarantee that when the race clock starts, I’ll be giving it my all from start to finish.

That’s going to have to be enough.