I’ve been going to Zumba and walking for the past couple of weeks.  Guess what?  I remember what was FUN about exercise.  I haven’t had this feeling in a long time.  I’m glad I’ve found it again because I was kind thinking that this slump that I’m in might go on forever.  Over the past two and a half months of starting and stopping over and over again, I lost the fun.

Somewhere along the line, running and exercising in general became a job.  And worse than that, it became a job of which someone else was in control.  I felt like I ‘had’ to get out and run as if someone was depending on me.  I had to run a certain number of miles or the whole effort was a ‘fail’.  That is a terrible feeing.  It is kind of weird and I am not really explaining this well, but I just was not personally motivated to  do any sort of exercise.  It had become drudgery.  

You probably already know this, but lack of exercise effects one’s mood.  I’d been in such ‘blah’ mood for way too long.  My days were melding into each other and becoming a blur.  Things that could have been fun and exciting were just something to do, something to take up time.  I kept thinking about the expression ‘bodies in motion tend to stay in motion’.  Well, the opposite is true as well.  Stationary bodies remain stationary.  The longer I sat around, the easier it became to just sit around.  The voice that woke me up and made me get out on the street to run became more and more faint as the weeks passed.  Eventually, I guess she would become mute.  So sad.

I don’t know what happened in my mind that allowed me to backslide so far.  I don’t know why my kickstart efforts didn’t work.  I bribed myself.  Fail.  I threatened myself.  Fail.  I ‘gave myself a break’ and stopped being ‘so critical’.  Fail.  …Sigh…  Nope, I don’t know what happened.  What I do know is that I feel different now.  I’ve given up the idea of running a marathon this fall and I’m not trying to figure out how I can get back on track with that training.  I don’t have a certain number of runs to do.  I don’t have a certain distance to reach every day.  I don’t have that job any more.  

I’m gonna continue to do Zumba and walk.  I’ll run again when the time is right.  I don’t know the answer to a lot of stuff, but I do know that when this is not fun anymore, I won’t do it.  My focus now is to keep it fun.  Running will be there when I’m ready.