Recently I’ve Felt Like Giving Up On Running. It’s Only Now I’ve Found Out Why….
I’m still having difficulties motivating myself to run in the morning and I’ve finally found out why.
I keep setting myself longer and longer distances and I can’t keep going further each time.
It’s getting brighter, later in the morning and it just isn’t feasible to be running 15 miles at that time.
I live in a small town and I can only run long if I go into the countryside where there isn’t much lighting at all.
I can’t be running around here with a miners cap on. The locals are quite superstitious and might mistake me for a dayglo Djinn and put their foot down hard on the pedal when they see me waving to them from the roadside.
I am not going down to the power plant by the seafront before daybreak either.
I don’t wanna be fucked and mauled by a sett of glowin’, howlin’ Badgers.
Bored of the really long weekday runs
The great thing about the 20 mile run on Sunday is that it has freed me up a little to concentrate on going faster over shorter distances.
I think from now on I’m gonna go back to running 8 to 10 miles in the morning.
That is more than adequate.
I’ve just got into this insane fucking mindset where I don’t think a run counts if it isn’t over half marathon distance.
By that logic, I would be running 30 miles before work in 2016 and I’d still be disappointed that I didn’t run the 29th mile in a sub 9 minute mile.
I’ve really lost the plot and my mind with it.
Not giving up running even though I’ve felt like it.
I haven’t really felt like myself in quite some time.
I think I’m exhausted from all of the training and for a while I’ve been wanting to just rest. The thought of those long morning runs has been draining me.
So instead of running 15 miles at 5am, I’m gonna get up at 6am and do 8 miles and work on my speed. I need to adapt to the weather and work on my pace now that it’s cooler.
It will be a welcome change from running those crazy distances.
An 8 mile morning run won’t leave me walking into the office like I’ve shit myself.
It’s time to become realistic and start enjoy running again.
I am a damn fool.
Good on you for recognizing what was sapping your motivation and changing it! I hope the change-up goes well for you.
what the hell is a dayglo Djinn???? Kudos to you for evvvvery single morning run. Im afraid to run in my own subdivision ha.
Thanks Jen!
Melissa, a dayglo Djinn is like an even more evil lephrachaun.
You were seriously going to kill yourself (or an innocent or not-so-innocent bystander) if you kept running billions of miles in the early AM before work. 8 is so much more do-able than 15.
However, I totally bow to your mileage prowess. You are seriously laying down some awesome mileage!
It happens to us all. Sometimes it is hard to take a step back & figure out how to enjoy running again when we’ve become numb. Good job!
your totally right to bring down the distances and to work on your speed more by doing so.All you are going to achieve by running 15 miles 3-5 times a week is a fairly effortless ability to run 15 miles at a comfortable speed.And you will burn out and become injured and maybe even seriously due to over training.
You have said yourself that you wanted to bring your times under the sub 2 hour mark, and you will regularly achieve this if you do short and mid distance runs and at a greater speed than your long slow runs.
I find half marathons easy as far as endurance is concerned because I regularly run that distance, but only weekly.My speed is greater 1:46 average for a half merely because I run faster 5k training runs and 10k runs with more speed effort than your typical long slow run.
It’s your lungs and fitness you need to work on now not your endurance, and then you won’t lack motivation because your speed will grow and your pb’s regularly fall 🙂
Thanks for that Les, some brilliant suggestions there.