Running Motivation

Ask runners who have been running for six months or more if they hope to run for the rest of their lives, and almost all of them are going to say yes. That’s the easy part—recognizing that your life is better because you run. What’s not so easy is knowing how to stay motivated enough along the way to keep running. Inertia is a mighty powerful force, and it can be tough to keep in mind how much better running makes you feel. So it can be difficult to resist that little voice that tells you that your life is hard enough as it is, so you just can’t deal with running this week. Then one week becomes two, then three, and then you’re way off track. In this section, I’ll show you some basic motivational strategies that I and other longtime runners use to keep ourselves on the road. If you get in the habit of using a few of the methods I tell you about here, not only will you want to run for the rest of your life, but you’ll be psychologically able to.