June Gloom

Although I have been basking in the freedom of being out of school for the summer, my motivation for running has dwindled the past several weeks. In fact, I haven't ran a distance longer than 6 miles the entire month and I am only sitting at 70 miles for the month with less than 9 days to go. I've run 17 out of 23 days thus far but all of my runs have been between 3-5 miles and rather slow. It seems like I've been unable to push my body to the faster paces I was running previously and unable to mentally push through longer runs.

I've decided not to stress about it too much and am trying to take the perspective that it is okay to ease up a little this month. In July I will need to commit fully to training for the NYC Marathon as it will be about 4 months out at that point and that is going to be a long, grueling cycle. Taking a break from the longer runs this month and being able to work on other areas of my fitness by going to more CG workouts and most recently full body functional workouts at the Athletic Zone in Dallas has been refreshing. I felt like I lost a lot of strength and muscle tone over the past year with so much emphasis on running and so little on strength training and I missed it. I also have CG Games in July, a little less than a month from now, and that is a tough challenge that will require some overall body strength. So I've tried not to beat myself up too much for my lack of motivation in the running department.

I was talking to a running/fitness friend about it the other day and she mentioned something that made total sense. I haven't been running with a group since last summer's marathon training. I've done the majority of my runs this spring alone. It hasn't worked out for me to run with DRC or some of the other run groups around due to my schedule and so I've had to do most of my running solo. The longer I run solo without accountability and the social aspect, the slower I seem to run and the lazier I get. It seems I'm content with a 3-4 mile run without a group to push me. I've worried about where I am going to get the motivation to ramp up training for NYC since I've just been so BLAH about running, but hopefully reuniniting with a group training program like DRC will re-ignite my passion. I'm still a little torn because I will only be able to run with DRC on Saturdays for long runs (not the Tuesday quality workouts I especially need). Part of me would like to run with the Rogue Running group but just can't afford the monthly fee at this time. After all I have races and travel and shoes to pay for still. So the plan is to start back running with DRC in July and hopefully find my mojo again.

I know that running has seasons and phases. Sometimes we are more motivated than other times and sometimes we can get a little burned out. Or sometimes we can lose sight of the things that we love about running. In my case, I've lost touch with my running community and crew that brought me a lot of joy. I'm looking forward to re-connecting in a few weeks and rekindling that bond as we pound out the hot, humid, sweaty miles this summer on the road to NYC!