I recently tweeted about motivation as I had a random thought about it. It strikes me that motivation and, similarly, despair, are often self generating once a certain level of either is reached. The old adage “when it rains it pours” emphasizes the negative aspect of it that I’m sure we’ve all felt at one time or another. I remember when we sold our house 4 years ago it seemed like things would never stop going wrong. The air conditioner failed the day I listed the house, the crawlspace suddenly developed a river, and a cut floor joist was discovered that (of course) passed the inspection when we were buying but at sell time had to be fixed lest the house collapse in the next 10 minutes.
Strangely, it seems to work in a positive fashion as well. My running since making the commitment to train for the marathon has been better than I can ever remember it being. Before Julia was born Cat and I trained pretty heavily for overall fitness and I would do some running for it, but my pace even now for my base runs is better than my pace for fast running back then. I’m also trying hard to simply not allow myself to quit. I’m not talking about quitting running overall, just stopping during a run because “it’s too hard.” Unless I’m dying or injuring myself, why should I allow myself to quit? It’s tiring and it’s effort and it’s not necessarily easy but there’s no reason to stop. I haven’t been able to do that before. My brain would start defeating me as I pictured the end of the run. I’d allow myself to feel how tired I was and I’d begin to make excuses which would inevitably follow with walking. Now, I just run. Save the drama.
I think it’s the new shoes.
