tEven I am getting tired of my excuses.

Tonight I went to my local YMCA to run my 6 mile cut-down.   It was a fast one and I didn’t want to do it outside.   To be honest, I didn’t want to do it at all.    Shortly after dinner though, I changed into my running clothes before I could  come up with an excuse not to go.

Get there and start running.

First warm up mile isn’t too bad.   Not great, but ok.   I realize that I’m not used to running fast.   To be honest, I’m not sure that I am used to running anymore.   I do know that I’m certainly not used to running on a full stomach and I’m not used to running at the end of the day as opposed to the morning.   These things do make a difference.

Mile 2 hits.

BAM!

It’s way too fast.   Not sure of which one of my already listed excuses it was, but I knew that I would not be able to hit these faster paces tonight.   Then that little voice in the back of my head starts thinking, “Well since you aren’t going to hit your paces, you might as well not even worry about running the full 6 miles either.”

I know it doesn’t make sense, but that little voice always seems so reasonable.   So smart.  So easy to listen to.   It’s like when your on a diet and you slip up and have a cookie.   Then the voice tells you since you already ruined your diet with one cookie, you might has well eat a dozen of them.

Reasonable.

Not in the least, but always so tempting to listen to that voice.   Most of us fall for this trap all the time.    I missed one run this week, I might as well miss two.  ect, ect.

So I start to have this internal dialogue with myself that I am tired of all the excuses.    Now I am not saying that some of them are not valid excuses, but still……   I keep telling myself to cut the crap and just do it.   It’s not an excuse not hitting my paces tonight.    That happens.   We all have our off days.    But it would have been an excuse to give up on the run as a whole.   So I adjust the paces.   I still do a cut-down, but one that I think I can actually do tonight.   Then I just go mile by mile.

I’ll be honest, at mile 4 I was thinking of calling it a day.   I was thinking of starting my cool down and just doing 5 miles.    Then one of my running friends husbands says hello and asks how far I’m running.   Damn you!    But it might have been just enough motivation I needed to keep going.

I finished 6 miles.

You know what?   I’m glad I did.

No guilt.

We as mother runner’s already have enough guilt in our lives that our workout routines should not add to it.    I know that if I didn’t at least complete the full 6 miles tonight that I would have felt like I gave up.  There are times I shouldn’t feel guilty about missing a run, but today would not have been one of those days.    Cutting this run short though would have just been me giving into the little voice in my head.

I’m so glad that I won this round.  I think the trick is to turn off that voice enough times that finally it shuts up.

Today I won.

I’ll tell you another little secret.    After I decided to do the whole thing, it felt good and I even got into the groove of the run.

 

 So the moral of the story is….

Just do it:)