Looking Back to Look Forward

This morning, our sunrise was scheduled for 7:07am. No amount of positive self-talk was enough to motivate me to get outside to run in the dark cold morning at 6:30. I just wasn't feeling it. And I hate treadmills. Hate.Them. I've only run on a treadmill ONCE this entire year and I'm not changing that now.

So I started wondering how I managed last year. So I went back to my log book to find out.

Observation #1) I logged a whopping two days of running in December 2009. On Dec 30 and 31. The rest of the month...nothing. Looks like I was working through the push-up challenge, but not running. Okay, that's not going to work for me. Need to figure out something else.

Observation #2) In Jan 2010, I ran on Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. Did walking during the week. I presume that is due to the dark cold mornings. While this is not ideal, it is certainly something that I can see working well enough for a few months while trying to stay afloat.

Observation #3) In Feb 2010, I picked up once mid week run, but still ran consecutive days on Sat and Sun. It wasn't until March that I returned to my normal Tues/Thu/Sat running schedule. And this must have worked just fine for me, because I PR'd at my spring half-marathon in April and felt terrific at the finish line.

Okay, now I have a plan. Don't worry so much about the mid week runs for the next few months. Run consecutive days over the weekend if necessary. Keep walking. And have faith. Just one more week of the ever increasing darkness; the days will start getting longer soon enough.