Re-motivate

There's bad news, and there's good news.

The bad news is that my last couple days have not been very good for my running. After Tuesday's issue with not completing the scheduled run, I had decided to simply swap out Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving me with a six-miler scheduled for that morning. However, after a late night of rehearsal, that morning saw no running.

So, I decided to swap out again. This time, I would switch that six-miler to Thursday and take my rest a day early. I did not get home from rehearsal until after midnight on Wednesday. Thursday morning came, and still no running.

Here was a point where I had to accept the fact that I wasn't going to make up my hours for this week, and I simply had to be okay with this.

In truth, it came about mostly because I did not have enough motivation to actually get myself out of bed. In all cases, I was awake early enough to get up and complete my runs in plenty of time. However, I simply lacked the conviction that I needed, due to a lack of sleep and a number of other small issues that have been nagging at me. The rest was not even as useful as it could have been. If I had planned the night before to take a rest the next morning, then I could have set my alarm for later and actually rested, but since I never planned the rest, all I earned was an extra hour of light sleep.

But here's the good news: I got back out there today. I always hit these slumps any time I get back into a training program, and usually I'll spiral out of my routine quickly. Not this time. I got up before dawn this morning and was hitting the pavement for my scheduled six miles. I'll have to let my missed six go for this week, and hope that I don't have too many more weeks where I'm up past midnight three nights in a row.

One factor in getting re-motivated today was the fact that my mother is in town. She's here to see my show, which opened last night, and so she's sleeping in our living room.

When I heard my alarm this morning, some part of my brain told me that if Mom didn't hear me walk through the living room on my way to run, she would be disappointed in me. She wouldn't have said anything of the sort, of course. She would have told me to take rest when I need it, and she's probably right, but I still felt motivated to let her know that I could still get out there in the mornings.

See, my mother is really the person who got me started in running to begin with. When I ran my first 5K race back in 6th grade, the junior high cross country coach (also the family orthodontist) approached my mother and let her know that he saw some talent in me. Without this conversation, I probably would never have thought about running competitively, and would have never discovered that I had athletic talent at all. Every step I've taken in running shoes since then was because my mom said I could.

And every marathon from here on follows from that.

Friday's Run:
72 Degrees / Humid
6.01 Miles
42 Minutes, 34 Seconds