The Hardest Part of Training

What is the hardest part of training? 

When I first decided to sign up for a half marathon, even with all of my motivation and enthusiasm, the hardest part was often getting out the door.  The training plan I chose dictated 5 days of running each week with Mondays and Fridays as rest days.  The first Tuesday was no problem.  Wednesday I was not overly excited, but headed out.  By Thursday my shins were sore and the tiny muscles in my feet were tight, but I headed out knowing I got a break the next day.  Saturday came all too quickly and I forced myself out the door for "an easy three miler" knowing I'd almost completed a full week of training without missing a workout.  Sunday I got out easier, simply looking forward to mentally checking the box on the week.  As the weeks piled up it got harder and harder to make myself hit the road.  I used every trick in the book, but it required extreme motivation and constantly reminding myself of my end goal to keep going.  I'm one to be motivated by progress so I maintained an elaborate spreadsheet of my training runs with as much data as I could think of - date, distance, pace, time of day, temperature, type of course, average heart rate, etc.  Seeing my pace go down, distance go up, and heart rate go down was sometimes what fueled me.  I was always glad I did, I eventually began to enjoy my runs, but even then just getting out the door was the hardest part of my early training.

After I completed my first event I knew I wanted to run more so my training needed to continue.  I even signed up for future events so I had the goal in sight.  I soon found the hardest part of training was maintaining motivation and consistency.  Thoroughout the next two years I cycled through periods where I would buckle down and train for a specific race or goal, only to be inflated by the end result to a point that I found it easy to slip into complacency.  By the fall of 2012, even with 32 half marathons complete, the hardest part of training was still just getting out the door. 

I then set new goals and a new training plan.  I still struggled at times to get out the door, but not nearly as much as previously.  As the next few months rolled along and I plowed through 14 additional half marathons I found the hardest part of training to be finding the time for everything else in life.  I'd finally gotten to a point in my running where training was a priority and did not seem as much of a burden!  And then injury set in...

Now, the hardest part of my training is that I can't.  Sidelined by injury, it has been nearly five weeks since my last race and nearly ten weeks since my last training run.  I've put in three weight lifting workouts in the last nine weeks as well - again, sidelined by injury.  As I recently complained via social media about my inability to train a comment by a fellow runner really hit home.  He encouraged me to view this as part of my training - the mental part - reminding me that putting in the time to rest now would result in improved health and abilities over time vs. ignoring the doctor and plowing through workouts which will inevitably cause further damage down the road.  So now, the hardest part of my training is no longer getting out the door...it's not being able to get out the door.  As my friends wind up their 2012 race calendars and post their exploits at various races I have a twinge of jealous, as I reflect on my times from the fall and know that with each passing week they are slipping further away I have a bit of pain, and as the stress of daily life piles on with the holiday I have an overwhelming desire to leave it all on the road/track; but in the long run this is all a part of my training - right now the hardest part - and I have to respect that. 

Whatever you find to be the hardest part of training at the moment, do what it takes to push past it...even if just today...it may still be hard but you'll be glad you pushed through.