Running Program – Staying Motivated part one
October 15th, 2010 -- Posted in Running Program | Comments Off
Staying motivated in a long-term running program
As with any endeavour that is worthwhile, it takes a degree of dedication and a long-term outlook in order to start reaping benefits from heart rate monitor training.
There is a dual edged sword when it comes to running and any form of cardiovascular activity:
- It takes time to build up a good degree of cardiovascular fitness; and
- The fitness is lost very quickly during periods of complete inactivity
During training, you can measure your progress and tell how well you are doing. Fitness gains tend to be pretty linear. You put the work in and you reap the rewards, slowly but surely you will improve and get fitter. There are no exceptions and this can be highly motivating if you approach it the right way.
The downside is that this fitness is lost at a much faster rate than it is gained. It only takes two to three months to lose all of your fitness gains if you do no physical activity in that time. This is a horrible fact, and it can be very de-motivating. What has taken ages to build, is knocked down very rapidly. I’ve heard some people use this as an excuse to never even start taking up activity, among many other excuses. Well, that’s a different matter to the one I wish to discuss in this short series of articles. Instead, I want to talk to those people who have been exercising for a number of months or years and have no doubt about the benefits that regular exercise brings.
There are times where the motivation to continue training will suffer a blow. It likely happens to everybody in just about any activity that is continued over a long period of time, no matter how enjoyable they find that activity. It could be monotony with the routine itself, or it could be caused by outside factors beyond our control.
To get good at anything, we have to practice it repeatedly and diligently. Familiarity breeds contempt, and so the sheer repetitiveness can cause a level of boredom. In a nutshell, what started out as fun becomes a chore. Fortunately, there are a number of things we can do to prevent this from happening, or to regain our lost enthusiasm.
Common examples of things happening outside of our direct control are illness and injury. We only have limited control over these, by taking care of ourselves and avoiding over-training. However, we cannot prevent these from happening entirely. Then we see out fitness affected and suddenly we can become de-motivated from continuing with the routine.
I recently had a lay-off from running due to an injury and I was chomping at the bit to get running again – I couldn’t wait, but knew that I had to. Then, when had fully recovered and restarted training, my motivation soon suffered. This was at the time when I realised how much fitness I had lost and thought about how long it would take to simply regain the fitness to the point before the injury struck. I had already missed a much-anticipated race while injured, and now a future race was also in jeopardy. Since the fitness gains are very linear, there is a real limit as to how quickly the gains can come – and it wasn’t going to be quick enough to make improvements in my racing performance. I knew that any attempt to speed up matters by training harder or faster can easily result in further illness or injury. So, even though I enjoy the activity, suddenly it felt like a chore because I was having to repeat the same training that I had done months beforehand. I found myself procrastinating about some runs that, ordinarily, I would be performing enthusiastically. I found excuses to be doing things other than running. Things that I didn’t enjoy anywhere near as much as running!
In my next article, I will discuss some of the techniques I use to regain lost motivation and stay motivated over the long-term.