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Tips Archives: Motivation

Everyone Has at Least One "Bad" Long One

• Group support pulls you through the bad ones.
• By helping others through their tough times, you receive positive internal rewards.
• These tough runs teach you how to deal with tough portions of the marathon itself

The Inspiration Muscle

When you're tentative about your motivation getting out the door for a run, if often helps to read (possibly out loud) the following list of benefits you receive after running:

• Your attitude is better after every run
• Stress is released, often completely dissolved
• Natural body chemicals (endorphins) relax the body, reducing or eliminating muscle aches and pains
• Your spirit is engaged, leaving you with feelings of accomplishment, confidence, and strength.
• Body and mind are connected, giving you the confidence that comes with being a more "complete" person.
• Your right brain is engaged, energizing your creative and imaginative resources.
• You're learning connections to hidden inner resources which kick in whenever you're under stress.

Low Motivation

Causes of Low Motivation

1. Low blood sugar, particularly at the end of the day. A performance snack such as PowerBar (with water, tea, or coffee) about one hour before exercise can help to get the blood sugar flowing.
2. Mental or physical scars from recent workouts when you've gone too hard, or too far. Through positive brainwashing techniques, you bypass this barrier by lowering the anticipated duress of the workout.
3. Your left brain is in control. This center of negativity and excuses will work under any condition, but with particular power when you are under stress. First, get into a relaxed mental mode where you feel in control (many go through relaxation techniques or meditate for a few minutes). Next, do something fun and positive. You can bypass or "wire yourself around" the left brain by going through a series of easy steps which gradually lead to the workout. The more you have mentally rehearsed this, the easier it gets. If you can get under the control of the right brain, you'll have better success.
4. At first, the workout isn't fun. Keep searching for parts of it which can spark your interest, or make it come alive, such as special places, special music, friends, a new outfit, a different energy drink, etc.
5. Reinforce yourself at each step of the way. When you keep going during a tough part, congratulate yourself. Reward yourself with a drink of water or sport drink, or a strategic walking break.

What's Next

Now that you have finished your marathon, whatıs next?

Hopefully, you followed Jeffıs advice for preparing for and running and reached your goal strong and injury-free. In his book Marathon! (Pp. 159-160), he suggests that you make a gentle return to running to speed up recovery of your muscles.

Walking right after your marathon and then again on the next day is a good way to ease back into your walk/run routine. On the second day after the big day, try going for a 30-60 minute walk/run, even if you feel more comfortable walking for most of the way. Over the next two weeks, you can gradually increase the ratio of run to walk.

After about a week, you might want to try an 8-13 mile run, putting in lots of walk breaks. Then in a couple of weeks, you could try going for 12-16 miles. Again, donıt forget those walk breaks! For your third long run, go back to 8-13 miles, and for your fourth one, you can go up to 20-26 miles if you want to.

If you are interested in running another marathon in the future, you can run a 20+ miler every third weekend. Walking breaks are key in this training plan. You want to make sure you stay healthy with as few aches and pains as possible.

Some people use this plan and run a marathon a month for their long training run. This seems to work fine for most people as long as they remember Jeffıs rule of thumb for marathon training:

Run at least two minutes per mile slower than you could run that distance on that day and make sure to take plenty of regularly scheduled walk breaks

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