A Trough in Motivation

• Wednesday 5.8 at a very slow 10:40 pace.
• Thursday 8x800 repeats at around 6:40 pace. Total distance 8 miles. I woke up late and scrimped on the warm-up and cool down. 
• Saturday 5 miles at around 9:30 pace - did the whole run watcthing the lunar eclipse.  It was AWESOME!!!  I'm surprised I didn't end up on the hood of a car, because I was not watching where I was running. 
• Sunday 17.6 miles at 10 minute pace

I don't normally dump two ideas into one blog post, but I guess I'll live life on the edge tonight.  I dread this time of year for the following reasons:  the runs are longer and harder as I approach the marathon, the mornings are colder, the weather is wetter, there's no hint of sunshine for any run that isn't a super long run, and the bed feels extra cozy every flipping morning.  Every year this happens.  I hit the time when I need to be most motivated and my motivation leaves me; however, as I am no stranger to this lull/trough/down-patch/blue-period, it affects me a little less.  I sort of expect it to happen and it does, but I also know I'll work through it like I do every year.  It still sucks.

On another note, let's talk about injuries.  I think a lot of us treat injured joints, tendons, and muscles like we we treat infections.  Follow me on this.  When you get an infection, the doctor gives you antibiotics (which is causing other issues in this world, such as anti-biotic resistant staph, but we'll save that for another post).  When you get about half way through the bottle, you usually feel like you've pretty much healed and ask yourself why you are continuing to use the drugs, but the doc says for you to finish the bottle or you'll get an even bigger and nastier infection.  You have a choice to make. You can either continue with the medicine and heal or be an idiot and expose yourself to a worse illness later on down the road.  Injuries are the same way.  I hurt my foot and was hitting the Chiro regularly, icing, using a massage pad, etc. to ensure I got better.  Well, the pain started to subside and what did I do?  Yes, I was an idiot and now my foot is aching again.  So I'm back on all the aforementioned treatments and will probably use them until the day I toe up to the start line at the marathon.  Lesson learned?  Probably not.

Help me send my marathon finisher medal to a person who survived her fight with cancer by clicking on this link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/dm/pfchangs12/mnortonnpu