How to stay motivated
When you really don't feel like running
If you’re new here, welcome to Run the Shoes, a not-too-serious newsletter about running and fitness. If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe to get emails like this in your inbox — it’s free!
Happy August! We’re in “high summer,” a term I’ve been seeing a lot on Instagram lately. I prefer to call this period of summer the dog days but maybe there’s a difference between the two that I’m unaware of. Unimportant! What is important is that it’s the last days of the Olympics and the track events this past week have been FIRE.
I’m one of those people whose personality becomes “Olympics” every four years. Yeah, the IOC gives me a lot of corrupt FIFA vibes and I question some of the performances I see, but I just feel a sense of inexplicable calm when the Peacock Olympic multi-view cam is on in the background of my living room. I was all over the place the first week—I got really into rugby sevens and street skateboarding—but then dialed in on track the second week.
I’ve cried watching a few performances so far, namely Cole Hocker winning the 1500 and Grant Fisher getting bronze in the 10k. And we’ve still got some great races left. On deck tomorrow is the women’s 1500, featuring world and Olympic record holder Faith Kipyegon of Kenya and her rival Gudaf Tsegay of Ethiopia—the two got into a physical altercation during the 5000 that resulted in Kipyegon’s silver medal being temporarily revoked (it was #drama). Two Americans are also in the 1500 final: Elle Purrier St. Pierre, a mom and dairy farmer from Vermont who’s a bit of an idol to postpartum running moms, and Nikki Hiltz, who I love because they’re from Aptos, California, a small town next to Santa Cruz, where my grandparents lived. (My grandma always recommended the Best Western in Aptos because it had a koi pond.) Anyway, the pace is going to be spicy and the Americans have a real shot at medaling! The men’s 5000 is also on Saturday; that’ll be a stressful one to watch as four extra runners moved onto the final after a ton of falls in the semi led to them advancing on appeal.
This weekend is also the grand finale, the marathon. I don’t think many of us stateside will watch it live as it’s at 2 am EST, which is a shame because it’s going to be an exciting race. The weather is hot and the course is gnarly—there’s a 13% grade hill around mile 18, which I actually ran in the Paris-Versailles 15k race two years ago. Can confirm it’s worse than the Newton hills. Two-time Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge has yet to prove that he can win on a hilly course, so that’ll make things interesting. Also, Sifan Hassan of The Netherlands will be running the marathon after already running the 5k and 10k races this week. Zut! as my Discovering French Bleu textbook would say.
But enough about the Olympics. The meat of today’s newsletter is how to stay motivated when you just don’t feel like running. July was a rough month of training for me. I took a week off after Grandma’s Marathon then tried to get back into a running routine but my brain, and my body, were not having it. After a few weeks of meh running—postponed runs, lots of walking breaks, botched workouts—I finally feel like my fitness has come back. I’m still struggling with the mental aspect though. I don’t have any races on the calendar, and I find it very hard to keep up momentum when I’m not training for anything other than… life. So today, I want to share some mental tools I’ve been using to get my butt out the door when I’m just not in the mood.
Plan to do the bare minimum. This is something a lot of fitness influencers I follow on Instagram always say and you know what, they aren’t wrong. It’s a lot easier to get out for a run if your plan is to go for ten minutes instead of thirty. And it’s a lot easier to keep running for ten more minutes once you’ve already started. I got myself to the gym the other day by saying I was only going to run for ten minutes on the treadmill. Right as I hit ten, the women’s 5k final came on, so I decided to keep running through that. It felt wrong to stop running during it. Solidarity, ya know? By the time it was over, I had run three miles.
Just lay the bricks. I try to think of my fitness habit as a brick house that I’m building over the course of my life. Hopefully, I’ll live to 100 and have a big ass mansion! The idea being that every run is a little brick being added to the house and I just gotta keep stacking them.
After today’s track workout. Pretend you’re an Olympian. I’ve been employing this one a lot recently. We’re all lucky that running is just a hobby for us. We’re not getting paid to show up and win races. But if you were, would you skip a run? Would you quit a workout? My coach gave me a hard workout this week and I really didn’t want to do it. I thought about all of the ways I could get out of it but then I watched some track and decided I’d pretend I was an Olympian going to work. I took the subway to the track, imagined I was in the Stade de France instead of Riverbank State Park, and pretended I was running paces that weren’t drastically slower than what actual pro runners run. In the end, I got it done.
That’s all I’ve got. They’re not fancy but they work well enough for me. Share any tips of your own in the comments.
Until next time,
Elaheh
*Correction: The original post said the Olympic marathon was on Sunday; the men’s marathon is on Saturday and the women’s is on Sunday.
Riverbank park represent!!