Staying motivated

Everyone has days when you have to wake up early yet once the alarm clock rings you happily snooze it until you are late. For triathletes this seem to happen more often than not, simple because early mornings are the norm and one can hardly remember the last time one woke up at 9am. Other than the early mornings, I also struggle to get out of the door for a run some days, such as yesterday and the day before. Only after a lot of self persuasion and mental hardening did I finally drag myself out and get my workout done.

The key to getting past these days where you just don't feel like doing your prescribed workout, I feel, is to have a target in mind and to remind yourself that if you slack now, it gets much harder to hit that target. For me, the long term target is to place in my AG for the next race, and a more short term target is to clock 40km of running this week. The goal should be something manageable and something you really wish to achieve for it to be useful.

Just having a target is seldom enough. It helps to train with a partner such that you are "obliged" to turn up for the workout. Of course that person must care. More often than not once you have an appointment you seldom
will want to sleep in.

For me, I usually just tell myself to suck it up and just do it. Once the workout is done I usually feel much better and accomplished. Remember that while you can snooze the alarm clock, you can't snooze your race!

[]