Thursday, December 13, 2012

Plateaus, injuries, and other mishaps that get in the way of a good run

After finishing the 10K last month, I thought I was going to be in the clear and ready to hit the home stretch for the half in February. I was wrong. I seem to have hit a rough patch with the workouts. I've developed an IT band issue, which I never knew what one of those was before about four weeks ago. The basic gist of the issue is when my IT band is nice and loose, I can run without a problem. Now when it isn't, the runs range anywhere from mildly uncomfortable to total pain from my hip to my knee. I thought that switching out to new shoes would solve the problem, but now I have an IT band issue and have to break in new shoes on top of it. On top of this, my body has been fighting off whatever numerous bugs the kiddos I work with seem to keep passing along to me. It's been tough to find the motivation to run when your head is pounding. Although I did manage to PR my 6 mile distance run two weeks ago with cold. Unfortunately my 7 miler last weekend was a completely different story. It's never been in my personality to do things half way, and in the past month I've been unsuccessful in at least half of my long distance runs. When I add real world stress on top of this, it's been hard to get motivated to get back out there. I had the best of intentions this morning, but do you know how easy it is to reset your alarm clock while you're in a sleepy haze? So, how do you go about motivating yourself after a series of setbacks, and how do you keep running even when you aren't meeting your distance goals?