Tuesday, August 19

On Motivation

Since I injured my knee back in January, I've had a tough time staying consistently motivated to run. I recently looked back over my running log, and during the February-June period, I think I averaged only about six or seven miles a week. So it has been slow going.

Fortunately, the upcoming Columbus Marathon is changing that. For a while, I was waiting to commit to the race before starting my serious training. But at the same time, when I wasn't seriously training, it was hard to feel like I was in good enough shape to actually complete the race. Several shorter races this summer (from 5Ks to a half-marathon) helped me to get over the Catch-22 situation that I had gotten myself into. Also, one really good long run (15 miles) last weekend finally convinced me that I could actually be ready for the marathon in October. It wasn't at the pace that I hope to eventually achieve, but I have to be where I am before I get where I'm going. Mostly, the fact that I didn't feel like complete crap for several hours after the run felt like an accomplishment in and of itself. I decided that I must be making progress towards being race-ready, after all.

It also helped considerably that the Women's Olympic Marathon was last weekend too. Seeing others run marathons, and run them well, does wonders for my motivation. Watching Constantina Tomescu build up such a dominating lead over the likes of Catherine Ndereba and the rest of the elite field was quite exciting--the aerial shots with the long, slow pans from the leader over to the chase pack something like a quarter mile back were quite amazing. I actually did the registering for the Columbus Marathon about a half an hour after Paula Radcliffe grittily limped her way to the finish (still finishing with an average pace around 5:40). Seeing that reminded me why I'm a marathoner.

Labels: ,