Ways To Motivate Yourself to Run

Ways To Motivate Yourself to Run
By Bidz dela Cruz


Sign up for a race as soon as you feel up to it. This is one good motivation, aiming to be part of a race event. If you haven't been in a race yet, this will surely motivate you to train, for you will always remember your first race.

Find a committed running partner. It is much harder to skip a run when you have someone else depending on you. Or the other way around, you are so attached to your climbing partner that you would always want to run with him/her.

Remember that you will have plateaus in your progress and tough days along the way. Do not take this as a negative occurrence. Any sport has its own plateau in training. Just blame it on the plateau whenever your training starts to slow down, and then you will feel better thinking that once you get past this stagnant stage, you will be better than ever. It's like a 'coming out of a cocoon process.'

It gets easier. That's the effect of training. The more you train, the more easier it gets. That's one great motivation: to aim for the easy feel of the then difficult stuff for you.

Accept and appreciate the fact that not every single run can be a good one. Yes, there may be runs where you sweat more, or you have experienced more fatigue, or muscle pain, but that shouldn't stop you from training and running. Just run and run and look forward for a good run. The more you run, the more chances of a good run.

Be prepared to remove the words “can’t” and “never” from your vocabulary. Having a positive outlook in training, keeping in mind the health benefits that this could bring you, will always help you motivate yourself.

Do not compare yourself to others. Run within yourself and for yourself first. Every individual has a different body type and composition, has a different physical fitness background. Comparing yourself with others, specially those who overtake you as you run along the oval, would only bring anxieties to you and could discourage you. Running is a mental battle to. You have to always be psyched up. Have a good mental condition everytime you run.

Don’t expect every run to be better than the last one; some of them will hurt. This is just the same as the tip earlier: “Accept and appreciate the fact that not every single run can be a good one.” Only, here, you are asked not to compare your runs among each other. In the first place, not every run has the same training program. One run, may be training for your endurance while another may be training for your speed.

Don’t think too much about it or you won’t do it. Thinking too much about the run will lead you to worry about it. Then you'll start getting nervous about it. When you run and you're nervous, you lose your breathing control and end up wasting more energy than usual.

Even a bad run is better then no run at all. This is my favorite motivation. If you have all the reasons to discourage yourself from running, then you might be justifying a 'No Run' day so comfortably. But this tip can make you feel bad. So go out there and burn those calories, or have the choice of stocking them in your body.

If you normally run with music try skipping it and listening to your feet to hear your pace and your gait. This will help you in your tempo and in knowing when to conserve energy in the run, or when to summon it all for one last leg.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t experience weight loss immediately. There are a lot of factors that contribute to weight loss and weight gain. It is not just running. Even with the given equal conditions, there is a proper way of running where only which could really burn your fats. Not every run is a fat-burning event.

Start a running blog and read other running blogs regularly. Having interest in your own sport develops your love for the sport. This will make you more difficult to skip training.

Running is not an excuse to triple your intake of doughnuts (or extra rice) because runners gain weight too. Again, as I have already mentioned earlier, there are a lot of factors that contribute to weight gain and weight loss. Running is one, and diet will only be another, there are many more. But be sure to take careful notice on your calorie intake and your calorie burn. If the intake is greater than the burning, then you are just gaining weight constantly.

Each pound you lose makes running a little easier. Enough said.