- Stress relief
- To make myself better
- To push myself
- To stay in shape
- To find a community
I feel that, almost literally, all these things are missing right now! I don't mean to sound the Debbie Downer I'm going to be here, but I'm also realizing why I'm struggling with so much of this. Stress relief: I'm stressed, I'm exhausted, and I'd rather sleep than go run when I have a three-hour round-trip commute ahead of me. I'm so far out of shape, I feel lousy and gross! And finding a community has been difficult, as I work Saturday mornings and nearly all our groups out here run on Saturday mornings only.
Excuses. I don't like excuses and feel like that's all these are. But I'm also trying to pin-point where my lack of motivation comes from, especially given Sunday's awesome race. Try and piece that one together - if you can, holler, because I'm sure stuck on how things just aren't matching up.
Where do you go when you're looking for inspiration?
I'm dealing with something similar right now. I'm still plenty eager to get out the door, but my body isn't cooperating: all my runs are orders of magnitude more difficult than I feel they should be, particularly compared to only two months ago. The hard part has been not getting too discouraged, especially when everyone I've been running with has been setting PRs left and right.
ReplyDeleteIn looking at your running schedule and what you've been up to lately, I would honestly put forth a combination of overstress and overtraining. You killed 21 races last year, have already hit 12 this year, and I'm guessing still have a handful to go besides R&R. Your training plan for R&R is also really brutal: tempo runs and track workouts every week with no breaks! That's awfully intense.
I know I certainly get discouraged when I miss runs and underperform in general, which only compounds itself when the difficulty level ramps up and I feel like I'm falling even further behind. At that point, I usually have to sweep away whatever schedule I'm going on and start over, because digging myself further into a hole doesn't help anything. This training cycle, I've been dropping a lot of runs, moving a lot of other runs around, and significantly altering my goal paces. It's allowed me to keep training--albeit not at the level I wanted, but I'm still running which is the most important thing--and has kept the fatigue at tolerable levels.
You may seriously want to consider making a deliberate decision to ease off the gas for a few weeks, or even months. My own move was incredibly stressful and draining, and I only went a few miles down the road. I can't begin to imagine going from one coast to another, starting a new job, and trying to ramp up in a half-marathon training schedule that's already pretty high on the difficulty scale. My suggestion would be--if you absolutely want to stick with R&R--is to drop your time goals, scale way back on your training, and just focus on getting [reduced] miles in each week. Speaking from experience, dropping the time goals is *incredibly* hard, but trust me when I say it's absolutely necessary.
Just my $0.02, as one Ragnar teammate to another :)
You're the best. Thank you for your words and encouragement and lecture all at once. The training plan is daunting, and to say I'd been even close to following it is a lie. :) I don't even feel like I'm in training right now. I think at this point, I'm just gonna run the half, see how it goes, and just have fun. And chill out about it and realize that not every race has to be for a stellar time -- I AM running the Strip at Night, after all! That ish should be fun! Time goal doesn't even exist anymore, as I just want to run for kicks and giggles -- and remind myself that it's just about doing it sometimes, not always being the best or setting a new PR. I'm glad you can relate.
DeleteAnd then I'll take some time. I do need to continue settling into work, settling into the commute and into life, and let that be the priority right now. Running is far from that.
Thanks, friend! <3
Sorry, I don't mean to lecture; for me, the only way I tend to fully grasp what's staring me in the face is when someone else points it out. Like when I complained to Cathryn earlier this month, berating myself for having such a long string of really awful long runs. She proceeded to (kindly!) remind me that I've been under an enormous amount of stress lately and really shouldn't expect to be able to operate at 110%. Me: "Oh...right."
DeleteAnd hey: have a very happy birthday! <3