I`ve been thinking a lot lately about motivation, goals and dedication. The holy trinity.
Some big words in there. They hold a lot of weight behind them. Everyone talks about them, how to keep them, how to generate them and how to succeed. They all work together, you think of a goal, motivate yourself to get started and with enough dedication you achieve said goal. But what happens when the motivation runs out? What happens after that goal has been reached? This has been my personal journey for a very long time. Sometimes its hard to just get out of the door. Its only been over the last year that I have truly started to acknowledge the most underappreciated side of the triangle, dedication. Training other people over the last year has given me a very different outlook on my own running. I catch myself telling other people things like "motivation will only get you so far, dedication will get you there every time!" I know....cliché, but it just popped out one day and has kind of stuck with me. I found my dedication to my clients was actually outweighing my dedication to my own training. Obviously this has lead to an increase to my own base fitness simply by doing it but more importantly it changed my mental approach.
Dedication. Do the thing anyway. Don't feel like going for a run? Go for a run while you think about it. Forget motivation, motivation will come and go. What we are really trying to build is habit. Yeah I know, it also takes a little motivation to still get out of the door so focus on that much. Get out the door. If you can summon up just enough to get out of the door, habit will take over. You don't have to be motivated to run 10 miles today but with dedication, you will.
If you can be dedicated, persistent, consistent, whatever you want to call it, you will reach that goal, sometimes simply by default! I know it once again sounds very cliché but if you are consistent with your training when everything else seems to fall apart your progress will creep up on you. Maybe in a conversation with a work colleague;-
Them - "Get up to anything at the weekend?"
You - "Na, nothing much. Went shopping, watched that new movie....went for a run on Sunday"
Them - "Ah nice, how far did you run?"
You - "14 miles...erm...22.5km I think?"
Them - "Woah! Was that an event?! That's so far!"
You - "Erm....nope...just my normal Sunday run" *considers what you actually just said out loud*
Them - "Wow, super fit!"
You - "I...I guess I am!" *considers what you actually just said out loud*
You both walk away a little surprised and slightly impressed.
Ok so this may currently seem far fetched depending on your current training but I promise, it happens. It happened to me very recently while catching up with someone I hadn't seen for a little while and it suddenly dawned on me how many miles I had run that week. They then asked if I was marathon training and I said currently, no. This lead me right back to thinking about actually starting to book them again, kind of a "well the fitness is nearly there, I might as well put it to use!" coming full circle, or in this case triangle, back to a goal and feeling motivated again!
Ok so what is my goal? I`ve been pondering this for a while and found that one event just doesn't seem to cut it for me on the whole motivation, dedication, goal triangle so I going to expand my target in favour of dedication.
So here we go, *GULP* I`m putting it out there in writing to try and hold myself accountable for when I undoubtedly lose motivation somewhere down the line. I have just turned 43 and have finished 29 marathons and ultras to date. My goal is 50 before 50.
There I said it...50 marathons and ultras before I'm 50, giving me 7 years to do 21...phew, that felt very odd to type!
I guess I should probably wrap up this post here and go for a run, I`ve got some work to do!
Love as always,
Cardiosaurus
