Running and Life

A couple of months ago I decided to begin running races again. I usually sign up for events because I find it helps me jump start my fitness and give me motivation to exercise 😉 I am a competitive person by nature and whenever I have a race to look forward to, I train because I don’t want to perform badly. I have done a 1 mile beach run, a 6 km race and a half marathon relay where my leg was 5 km, all in the past two months. But for me, running has become so synonymous with how I feel about life. Let me tell you why:

• Good Days and Bad days: There are just some days where you have absolutely no motivation to run, you really rather just curl up on the couch and watch TV or play a game on your phone, just anything else but physical movement. These are the bad days, which we all have. But, there are also good days, where you push yourself and you can run a longer distance or run your best times. You feel motivated, excited and inspired by running. This is how it is sometimes with life, we all have good days and bad days, days when we rather just retreat into our shell and block out the world and days when we are happy and in a good mood. One thing to remember is that not all days are going to be bad and not all days will be good either, take them as they come ❤
• Burn out is real: Even though I enjoy running, I am cognizant of the fact that too much of anything is good for nothing. If I run too much, push myself too much, I could become burned out. I am not a professional runner and I am not training for the Olympics. So while you have to push yourself to be able to improve, you can’t push yourself too much that you become too exhausted or even injure yourself. This same theory can be applied in your everyday life, whether it be with regards to your job or a business that you are running, push yourself but also pace yourself 😕
• Goal Setting: Although I am not a professional runner, I don’t just run for fun. I like to set goals for myself in the form of races and medals that I collect. I am always training for some future event. Goals help keep me on track and give me something to work towards. You should set goals for your home-life and your career for both the short term and the long term 💡 It helps to give you purpose for an activity.
• Compete against yourself: My favorite running app is Strava. I like to use this app because it makes it easy to compete against myself and my past runs. I see running as a personal thing, I am trying to beat my own best time, if I did a 5k in 32 mins this month, next month I want to do it in about 31 mins or less. This is also how I like to approach life, everyone shines in their own way at their own time, you cannot spend your life trying to compete against someone else, they have their own path and journey, they are running a different race than you 😎

So push yourself but know when to stop and take a break. Have fun and sometimes all you need to do is take that first step to get moving again. Set goals for yourself and continue running! Do you run often? What is your major motivation for running or exercising?

Much Love

Celly