Mind and Body

It’s been a long time because I’ve had a hard time finding the motivation to post…or maybe finding motivation to think of topics to post. However, that’s pretty appropriate, given today’s topic, which is fitness and motivation.

To start off, a little bit of understanding is necessary. I’ve been a pretty devoted runner for about four years now. I suppose it’s really closer to three, because in my junior year of high school I got very sick for pretty much the entire year due to stress and bad nutrition, and was lucky if I could run once a month. But before that year, I had been running nearly every single day for the past two years, gradually building up to 5 miles when I got sick.

Now I’m just working on getting back into it, and finding the motivation to run like I used to. The biggest motivator is something I’d all but forgot about, in some small corner of my mind: one of my dearest goals in life is to compete in the Ironman Triathlon. It’s motivating to tell myself I’ll never get there if I don’t start devoting myself to running and working out again.

So I started looking up training plans for an Ironman, just to see if I could expect to be in good enough condition to run one in, say, 8 years, and found one on Beginner Triathlete. The training plan is a good thing to look at, if you ever want to complete in a triathlon at all, let alone an Ironman, or if you’re just curious about what athletes go through to even finish this thing.

What I wanted to share with everyone today, however, was a side link I found, which is about motivation. Half of being fit and working out has to do with motivation.
The page is here if you want to read it, but it essentially outlines that motivation is not about FEELING good enough to go and get in a really tough work-out.
I felt this was important. A lot of the time, when I discuss my running career with others, they express to me how they wish they could do what I do, or lose weight or get into shape. And still others complain al the time about not having motivation for any number or type of thing; writing, practicing an instrument, running, whatever. The point is that people sit around and wait to feel like they want to do something, which, says this page, is not motivation. Motivation can be gotten by setting reasonable short- and long-term goals, and sticking to them.
I can relate to this pretty well, because for the past few months, I have had to relearn how to motivate myself, how to get myself to go out and run on days I just really didn’t feel like it, and I gradually started to realize I’d never get back into the shape I had been in a couple of years back if I maintained that attitude.
It was a nice reminder to find this here, telling me that motivation has more to do with making yourself meet your goals and then creating good habits so that motivation is habitual and a lot of effort is no longer required.

So, read that, take a look around that site – it’s got great tips on eating right, exercising well, and keeping in shape both mentally and physically. Just thought it would be nice to share.