Sure, I can blame any number of things for not running much in the past three weeks... Don't want to exacerbate injuries... My achilles hurts... My knee hurts... Traveling out of town... Shortened number of waking daylight hours... Don't like running in the morning... Don't like running at mid-day... Too cold... Too hot... Foul weather... Don't feel well... Wish I had some kind of exercise equipment in the house... And the killer, "Don't feel like running"
I'm sure I could think up a million other reasons, but it all really comes down to motivation. Plain and simple. I wake up late. I stay up late. I spend entirely too much time sitting on a couch ticking away at the computer and/or watching TV. But really, I was doing that when I was running on a regular basis. Of course, when you're not physically progressing towards fitness goals, this can only make things worse.
Yes, I've slipped back into a downward spiraling pattern that's all too familiar to many people, including myself. Being unemployed always does that to me. Not having to get out of the house and be somewhere on a daily basis induces an insidious malaise that's all too easy to slip into and hard to shake off.
It's like a warm, comforting, lazy, 200-pound wool blanket. Somewhat nice and snug while you think you're cozy beneath it, but you can't get a lot accomplished and it's difficult to get out from beneath its weight. So it can be easier to just stay there and let it slowly smother you and suppress the urge to do anything else whatsoever. The itch to do something about it can be maddening, depending on how much you feel about actually doing something about it.
And telling myself I'm going to run today, what do I do? I blog about it instead. "Plenty of time to run" I tell myself... There's still a good couple hours of daylight left until sunset.
Enough procrastinating... Time to put on the running gear!
