Snowball effect

It's raining and cold and I'm thinking I would love to just stay inside all day, but I know I should run. Not just because I need the exercise and the mental health boost, but because I've got less than two weeks to train for a 10 km race.

The thing is, I haven't run more than twice since I've been back from Alberta, and it's kind of a snowball effect when it comes to making or breaking a habit: If it's going well, then things keep getting better. Success builds on success. But every day that I put off running, it becomes that much more difficult to get myself out the door.

One thing I've discovered this year about running, however, is that not all is lost if I don't put on my runners for a few weeks (even months). If I get off track with training, it's still worth it to go for a jog around the block, even just to get some fresh air. And if I haven't been training, it's still worth entering races, because, so far, even races I haven't trained for have been good. And they give me a tangible goal to work towards.

Not just in a physical sense, but also in maintaining any kind of descipline, baby steps are never wasted. It's taken me ages to learn that lesson, because I'm stubborn and tend to want to chuck any progress I've made out the window as soon as it starts to go sideways. Hopefully I'm starting to see the error of my ways in always thinking of things in black or white, either-or, and am slowly coming to a more mature understanding of balance in all things.

So I haven't been running in more than a week, and I sure don't feel like it today, but I'm going to go anyway because I'll be happy I did when it's done. And then I can put another red dot on the calendar for today to mark my effort.