The Crack of the Whip

This is what it looks like today outside my back window. What you cannot see is the drizzly rain, the chilly wind, and the dampness that creeps into your bones. Not my kind of weather, and I sure did not feel like running outdoors this morning. Luckily I walk my kids to school everyday and doing that gets the blood going just enough to feel like maybe it isn't so bad out there after all.

On the way home from school I was thinking about David Servan-Schreiber. I just finished his other book, about cancer, and in it he tells about his own battle with a brain tumor. One of the things that struck me is that during the year after his surgery, while he was getting chemotherapy, he went out for a 20 minute run with his dog every day. In all kinds of Pittsburgh weather. He credits the running as one of the things that helped him beat the cancer. And I was thinking to myself, what a wimp I would be not to run in this mild Belgian fall weather.

Then I was lucky my husband was around this morning, so he wanted to run, too. So we did. We went to Heuvelhof Park, to run on the Finnish track, which was mucky and muddy but oh, such a different workout than running on sidewalks. We ended doing three loops on the track and then headed home, which took altogether 40 minutes and would be about 5 km, give or take.

The synchronistic thing is, when I sat down to check my emails, I had one from one of my oldest, dearest friends, and she wanted some advice on how to get some motivation for her own running, which she was having a tough time mustering up. Do you know that old saying about the thing you are called upon to teach is the thing you most need to learn yourself? Bingo!

This is what I wrote back:

About the running....it is so hard to be motivated without a stick! I am sure that I would not be training right now if I didn't have that half marathon in March hanging over my head. Stefaan and I just went running this morning and I told him, I just don't ever really "feel" like running, I truly don't. He,on the other hand, says he wakes up sometimes and just feels like going, so he does. Eck. Not me,
definitely.

So I know what works for me is having a race coming up. It also is a huge help that Stefaan runs the long runs with me on Sundays, because I would probably blow those off too, or run less than I am supposed to, without him being with me. So my advice would be: get a running partner who is more disciplined than yourself and who it would be hard to let down, and sign up for a race.

The other thing I try to do is focus on the benefits of exercising. Even though I don't enjoy it, I do know that I always feel better and have more energy on the
days I do it, than on the days I don't, and I really try not to forget that (although sometimes that's hard when it's cold and you really don't feel like going out.)

One last thing that helps is making yourself accountable to something, like the blog. I know Mom and Jenny and Christy and Mark and...are going to be looking to see if I've kept to my running and if I don't they ask me about it. It also gives me something to think about when running, what am I going to write on the blog - gives me an opportunity to get those creative juices flowing!

Finding motivation is hard but the key is figuring out what works specifically for you - so you'll have to be creative. For example, for me, rewards don't really work, but for some people they do. And I know some people where even being signed up for a race doesn't do it.

So, good luck to all of us this winter in our search for motivation - we all have our own specific struggles to overcome, but at the end of the day, it is worth it to make that investment in our own health that we get by being runners!