I think I can, I think…

I have a love/hate relationship with running. In the past I’ve loved it and as soon as I hit peaked and hit a plateau I  stopped. I stopped enjoying it and stopped the running altogether. Can you believe I stopped running after I actually enjoyed doing my first 5km road race? Maybe it’s because I desperately need new shoes, or maybe I should switch to a more supportive shoe like the trail running shoes (I’m digging these babies!)

My Boyfriend, the triathlete trains 7 days a week and wears Heart Rate Monitors all the time, from swimming, biking and while running, to track his fitness and keep his heart rate down to a reasonable level. When I was a member at the gym (shame on me, not anymore) I wore one of those things once while getting my fitness level tested (I did well actually!), and even though I was running for about 8 months (only on an indoor treadmill with no incline, cause I’m a real winner like that) my heart rate was always through the roof 190bpm! Even though I didn’t feel out of breath, and I could run for 6 miles with no big deal. My heart rate was always high. I never did understand that part about it. Like I said, love/hate.

Hate plateauing. Hate not knowing why my heart rate was always up. Loved being able to watch TV and running at the same time. Loved seeing the 2 inches disappear off my butt.

I think I need to be competitive with myself or anyone really, constantly. I guess you could call that goals.

I used to work for an internet website marketing company that actually had a gym inside the building. It was so hard not to skip going to the gym, because I actually had to walk past the weight room to get out of the building. As a competition once, a few of the staff had a handful of coworkers willingly sign up (there was about 300 people in the company) to walk across Canada virtually. They handed us each our own sleek black pedometer and off we went for four months and we kept track of our fitness online.

There were about 8 per team and each of us were tracking our daily workouts and how far we ran/walked/hiked/biked, whatever it was! Could have even been a sport like basketball or soccer.  I ruled that one out because I wasn’t on a team at that point. Having Pedometers (and getting to keep it after!) and that competition was great fun. Of course, our team being the most athletic (we had a marathon runner, a snowboarder, and a few others including me on the team, basically having a bunch of youngin’s was a total plus. Which is why we won!

Want to know the grand prize?

What did we win?

A pizza party. Now tell me how is that rewarding and healthy after a long so many month trek across the country! Sheesh. At least we got a cool t-shirt out of it too, which I wear to bed now.

So, what I’m trying to say here is that I get the motivation about 6 months after stopping my workouts, to start up again. After reading a bunch of my new found blog friends, and going to my Boyfriends first race of the season I’m happy to say I’ve found that motivation to start up again.