Motivation. I Need It!

I am struggling with staying motivated lately.  My life has changed a lot over the past month +.  Sleep is not what it used to be as you can imagine with a new baby.  Abby does an awesome job at night with taking care of baby C, but it is still a broken sleep.

When my 4:30 AM alarm would go off in the past, I would hop right out and get to it.  Now, not so much.  I am groggy and not totally motivated.  It is almost like I would skip workouts, but then I guilt myself into them.  What the heck?!?!?!

I have some races coming up.  That is pretty motivating, but I still feel like I am lacking some.  It is almost like as soon as I ran that 13.1 miles my mind said, OK, go ahead and give up now.  It is weird, and I am rambling, but just trying to get these thoughts out onto paper might help.  Right??!?!  lol.

Anyway, in addition to the lack of some motivation, I have hit another hiccup in the training plan (OK, so I am not really on a training plan as much as just a schedule).  On Saturday, I had a first.  I was out for my "long" run and my legs quit on me.  They said "nope, not going any further."  It wasn't pretty.  I have had mental blocks to get through before, but not really physical until then.  I hit my 6th mile and my legs were tight.  I changed my pace a bit to try to help it.  Didn't work.  Mile 7 came and went.  Then as soon as I finished mile 8 it was like my legs said "stop already." So I listened to my body.  I stopped my run.  I was mad!  Mad at my legs, mad at myself for listening to them, just plain mad.  So I bowed my head and tucked my tail and walked/jogged the 1.5 miles back to the house.  Talk about feeling defeated!

This morning I was bound and determined to get a good run in!  I set out and felt good.  Well, other than the extremely warm temperatures and insane humidity that had me drenched in under a half mile!  Then mile 2 comes along and bam!  There it is again.  Except now I know the cause, well I think I know the cause.  Pain came with the run this time.  The same pain that I felt with my right knee issues before.  Ouch!  Then the left shin started to ache and feel sore.  I got my 4.5 miles in (less than I had planned) and with a reasonable pace.  I didn't want to push it more in fear that I would cause more damage.

So here I am again.  Slightly injured right before my race(s).  It stinks!  So now I have to decide whether to push through the pain and continue on my schedule or take some time off.  I am leaning towards keeping with schedule on weight training and taking off from running until next Tuesday.  That would mean skipping my Thursday morning run and Saturday "long" run.  I guess we will just have to see how I progress.  Needless to say, this didn't help my motivation issue.

OK, so that has been a lot of blah!  Here is something positive to end on.  I weighed in Sunday to check my stats. Guess what??!?!  I have hit my highest weight since March at 151.2 lbs, but on top of that, I have also reached my lowest body fat % at 14.4% and highest water weight % at 62.4%.  So that was positive and a bit motivating that I am doing something right.

So that was a long enough post.  If you are reading this I commend you for not falling asleep and sticking with my ramblings.  Hopefully the next one will be much more fun!  Until next time blogosphere...