Semi-public embarrassment or the threat thereof

That's the reason for the blog, ultimately - partly as a "training" log, partly to clarify my own goals, and partly to act as motivation through the threat of embarrassment when I slack off.

I'm like many, my running goes pretty well when I'm actually doing it; I motivate quite easily to get out the door at 5:30 AM on cold winter mornings when I'm into it, but when my motivation flags, when my roll stops, it can stop hard. For instance, I ran the Bluenose marathon in 2007 and then almost immediately after went to sea for three months on board a vessel with no training facilities. On returning home, I couldn't get started up again. In the following year and a half, I started training twice, and only now, fully twenty months later, can I really say I'm back at it. When I look back, even in the training leading up to the Bluenose, my first marathon, I wasn't really into it like I want to be.

The fact is, I want to obsess about running. I want to think about my runs when I'm doing them and when I'm not. I want to look at my Garmin records over and over and compare my heart rates from one run to the next. I want to log my runs in Google Earth. I want to run when the weather is great and when it sucks. I want to read books about running and read magazine reviews about books about running. I want to be one of those idiots you see in the Halifax sleet in January on the side of the road, grimacing and splashing. I'm hoping this space will help me obsess.

That said, my goals for now are just to continue training through the winter to keep my fitness and spirits up. Running makes me a better partner, father, person, and those really are the improvements I'm looking for.