Motivation

{Please excuse my ghostly white legs...}

On April 28th, I will be running my first 10k. 

And I'm kind of paralyzed with both terror and excitement.

I used to run in high school, once or twice a week on my own, with no real, long-term goal in mind. I was pretty active during that time in my life, so my motivation wasn't fitness as much as it was just an opportunity to take a mental break for forty-five minutes. When I went to university, I got busy with other things and taking myself out for a run was no longer a priority in any sense of the word. I think I may have gone out for no more than five runs over those four hectic years. 

This January, I finally decided to start running again and I thought that perhaps joining a running group might be a good motivator for me. The thought process being that if I was paying for it and it was in my calendar as a set time each week, I would do it. So I started searching for running groups but quickly found that they were either too far away for me to attend while on-call for work, or they were focused on training for a particular race. I was a little discouraged because I didn't think I was ready or interested in training for a specific goal - all I wanted was a way to keep me accountable to run once a week! But after some consideration, I decided that I would join a training group and just not run the race.

Day one of training came and I realized that there was no reason for me not to complete the 10k and that training for a specific goal, with a group of other people doing the same thing, would only create even more motivation. It was silly for me to train and not do it when I would be completely capable of doing so.

So I'm running a 10k one month from today.

I'm on track to complete the race in under 75 minutes, which was what I had tentatively set out for myself back in January, and I have to say, that feels really good. I still find that there are days when I don't want to make myself go out in the wind and cold and rain and do my individual 'homework' runs, but I know that I won't regret going - I only ever regret not going. So I put on my running gear, lace up my shoes, and force myself out that door. And I'm always proud when I do.