Five essential tips to help keep you training

THE QUESTION

I do the same run three or four days a week, and don’t feel I’m training as hard or as often I should, but I am having trouble motivating myself. What should I do?

THE ANSWER

There is a difference between the motivational process for elite, national-class runners and those with a more recreational focus. I’m writing this at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Punta Umbria, Spain, and a brief survey of the Canadian team about what gets them going reveals answers that are very specific: personal best times, finish place, making future national teams. It’s a weird space to live in, and the ongoing intensity of that kind of life can be hard to appreciate from the outside. These elite athletes tend to use associative (narrow) focus much of the time when competing. They climb into a pretty rigid box and deal with body awareness, distance completed and race tactics.

For most recreational runners, however, the process is quite different. We head out for fitness, to lose weight, to be social, or just to have a few quiet minutes to ourselves. The focus is dissociative and so we daydream, look at the view, listen to music, talk to friends. We don’t want our exercise to feel job-like after a day already spent at work.