What do you do to renew your relationship with running?
Running and I are fairly new to each other--we've been serious for just over a year. A year is long enough, however, for this Aries to start getting bored. Commitment is difficult for me. . .ask my husband of eighteen years (Love you, Mon Petit Chou!); I constantly get bored with any kind of stability, which I often perceive as stagnation. It often takes a lot of reflection for me to realize that I am NOT bored, that stability itself can be a very satisfying goal. For example, I look at my husband, and I think about what our life was like last year, five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, and I feel extremely grateful for what we have together now. BAM! I'm in love again.
How can I do that with running?
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| This is EXACTLY how I look when I renew my running vows. |
One way is through my list of races and times. I don't like to compete with other people, but I constantly compete with myself. I like to check my times for all my races through Athlinks.com, which is a free tracking site. I often look at my times and think about how I felt when I ran those races. Did I push myself? Was I happy? Then I compare my current practice times with those races. Will I PR in the next 10k? You bet I will! Seeing the progress in the numbers makes me want to continue this relationship.
Another way I can renew my relationship is by reviewing my goals, both long and short-term. I use Dailymile.com to help me with this. This online journal tracks my miles, pace, and how I felt about that moment. I can look at my profile (or the widget on this blog) and see how far I've come toward meeting my goal of one thousand miles in 2013. I can look at any entry and think about whether I should be working on speed, hills, or distance.
Yet another way is through this blog. I look at my previous posts, and I remember how I felt at that moment in my life, and I realize how hard I've worked to get to this point. I also realize that there will always be bumps in the road; some will be pebbles, and some will be boulders. The blog helps me to remember that I got around the previous obstacles, and I'll get around any future obstacles, too.
Lastly, I would like to celebrate a short-term goal I made for myself this week (Spring Break): I ran four days in a row, Baby! While waking up at 7:00 wasn't my favorite thing to do, I am so glad that I started my day by renewing my relationship with running. I'm taking tomorrow off (gotta clean the house sometime), but I'm going to rock a long run on Sunday.
I was GOING to respond to your last post, but was distracted (sheesh.) I think what stopped me was that I feel that renewing my relationship with running is, well ... shallow.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about the music.
Every new year I run through playlists for every year I have been alive on the planet. That generally carries me through one-third of the year. After that it's all about flipping and flopping my iTunes library ... if there isn't music to look forward to, it's much harder for me to hit the road.
Having said that, I did find that training for a marathon last year, my second, made me a lot happier about running in general, as its own pursuit. And actually running it was like childbirth -- something you swear you will never do more than once, until you do it again. And then you have a baby!
I've been looking at all of your playlists and thinking about trying the same thing. I only have a racing playlist; for the rest of my runs I just put it on shuffle. If I can figure out how to coordinate this, I'm going to give it a shot.
DeleteI used to spend a lot of time creating these lists ... but now I have them all saved in my iTunes and add to them as I discover new songs. Also, if I find a song with good bpm I make sure I enter that into "info" and have several playlists which automatically compile like bpms. A little advance work when I have spare time saves time for me later. I LOVE MY ITUNES.
DeleteI get complacent as well...every once in awhile I have to take a break and just get out there and enjoy nature..or sometimes I read my runners world magazines and get all reved up and in love again with running...lol! Blessings girl!!
ReplyDeleteShannon at I Survived and Now I Run
Sometimes Runners World helps me to get motivated, but sometimes it just intimidates me. Thanks for commenting! I love finding out how people keep up with running!
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