I’ve lost my running mojo

Despite having such a fantastic 100th parkrun general experience on Saturday, the running itself was fairly rubbish. I know I only have myself to blame for this of course.

I say it every single time but I never follow through: “I’ll take a couple of weeks off of running after my marathon”. Then lo and behold, I don’t. I know I’m stupid. I just love running – especially the mental side of it and the thought of not doing it for a few weeks isn’t particularly appealing to me. And after Boston I was on such a running high I just wanted to keep going. I thought by not pushing any sort of hard pace I’d be OK. Run easy runs, shorter than I did previously, and I’d be fine. But the love that was there was slowly dwindling away as the training and the race caught up with me and I’m now not enjoying it.

It doesn’t help that my hamstring still isn’t 100%, though it’s never worse after running and some runs feel absolutely fine whereas others I can feel the slight niggle. To be honest, I think deadlifting at the gym has aggravated it *sighs*.

So anyway, Saturday’s run felt like such a grind and my hamstring was niggling slightly (probably due to my Friday deadlifts). I’d planned to run a long run on Sunday to reattempt my previous failed 16 miles from the week before. I felt demotivated going to bed, I felt demotivated when I woke up and I was dragging my heels to get myself out the door. And when I finally did, I felt my hamstring as soon as I started and that was all the excuse I needed to throw the towel in. I must have looked like a bit of loon to anyone nearby as it was literally a 30 second run from the front door and then me turning around saying out-loud “no, nope. Not happening”.

I was at my parent’s house so when I stormed back into the house moments after leaving my dad said, “Didn’t go well, then? I thought you might be back sooner than expected…” apparently my lack of running mojo was evident before I left. I wasn’t even that upset. I was relieved. This tells me something that should have been fairly evident to me: I need a rest.

I’ve done too much post-marathon. I should have taken a full week off at least. I was just on that post-marathon “I love running, everything’s awesome!” feeling and was looking ahead for the Cakeathon.

Unfortunately the Cakeathon is hurtling towards me quickly and it’s not a race I want to DNS…That said, it’s not a race I want to travel three hours to (dragging my dad with me) on a Bank Holiday Monday and then not enjoy it. It was such a great race last year I don’t want to mar that memory.

So what’s the plan? Well, I’m not running all week. I’ve made that absolutely certain because I left my trainers at my parent’s house. No temptation there. Then I’ll try parkrun on Saturday. If I feel a) tired/heavy legged, or b) demotivated, or c) my hamstring feels niggly, then I won’t go. It’ll be such a shame obviously but, at the same time, it’s not worth trying to recreate how amazing last year was. It wouldn’t be the same.

Have you ever lost your running/exercise mojo?

How do you motivate yourself?

How far are you willing to travel for a race?