Lacking Motivation

The past 2 weeks have been hard. Really hard. As I mentioned earlier, I have now started on Hal Higdon's Half Marathon Training Plan. This is week 2 and I'm already fighting to keep my motivation up. Its not the training plan - its me. As lame as it sounds, its true. I admit that I was a little nervous about the first long run - at 4 miles it was just short of a full mile longer than any run I'd done before. But as a pleasant surprise, it wasn't a big deal at all. In fact, I didn't feel much different than at the end of a 3-miler.

I suspect that this whole motivation thing is temporary, largely because I don't have the motivation to do much of anything outside sleep and other calming things like knitting. Yes I knit. In the past couple of weeks work got crazy busy and even more demanding than usual, there was some serious family crap that had to be dealt with, my daughter's birthday is in a week and a half and in a moment of insanity I agreed to let her have her first slumber party - so now all of that has to be planned. Add to all of that that like most of the country, if not the world, finances are super tight and I just don't have the energy to care.

Also, the summer is killing my training schedule. I don't mind the running so much, its the f-ing heat and beating sun. See, here in Salt Lake City it is hot, and even over night it doesn't ever really cool off. If we're lucky, it'll dip below 80 somewhere around 3 o'clock in the morning. Since I absolutely abhor the idea of running miles and miles on a treadmill in a gym full of overly perky (read: judgmental) co-eds where you can feel the dank sweat in the air, that means I have to get creative. And frankly, I haven't had the desire to get creative. I don't want it to be hard. I want to go back to when the only thought that I had to give to the weather was to be sure I was dressed appropriately.

For the time being, I am trudging on, but this utter lack of motivation is starting to royally piss me off. Seriously. And ironically, the only thing keeping me sane is the stress relief of my runs...