Motivation Roadblock

Today's lunch: chipotle!

I am a highly motivated individual.  I've never been the smartest person in the room, or the nicest, or the prettiest, or the most graceful, or strong or fast or WHATEVER, but you better believe if I set my mind to something I will accomplish it.  (Please note, I also reallllly like myself so I tend to set goals that are completely attainable in order to propagate this reality.  Aim low, win big!)  But lately, I've been feeling extremely unmotivated.  I'm getting the things I need to get done, done, but going above and beyond is just not happening.  There are a number of reasons for this: 1) I don't feel challenged by my current schedule 2) It's really hot and smelly outside 3) I've been eating a lot of junk (see photo) 4) I'm a little burnt out from the 80 hour weeks I rock when school's in session, etc.

The excuse train stops here.  It has to, because in the fall I've committed myself to a couple of things that are just a littttttle bit outside of the range of my current capacity, and if I'm not ready...well, not being ready just isn't an option.

Goal outside my current capacity # 1: Running an 18 mile race

This is a funny one folks.  I got it into my head that I would run the 2012 marathon by way of the New York Road Runners 9+1 program.  As it turns out, one of the qualifying races for 2012 is the 2011 marathon tune up...so I signed up to race 18 miles with a bunch of folks who are planning on running 26.2 a few weeks later.  I figured, might as well start bulking up the mileage this year, give myself a good juicy challenge.  Have I ever mentioned that my longest run was 13.1 miles?  Did I mention that my longest run in months was around 8 miles?  HAVE I TOLD YOU THAT I'M EATING ALL THE JUNK?!


Clearly the time has come to focus.  I've set myself up on a very official stupid simple training program that begins this week, and I'm going to have to start eating to fuel my workouts.  Unfortunately, with my lack of intrinsic motivation, I'm finding it very difficult to get my butt in gear.

It's so bad I've been bringing my gym bag to work just so I'll go straight there instead of home (once my butt hits the couch, its over).  So for the next nine weeks, I'm going to blog my training and eating so that YOU can hold me accountable (aka I'll be embarrassed just in case anyone reads this and I'm being a total lazyass).  Don't worry, I won't become a health blogger on you (I would totally fail).  I'm just going to pepper my usual menu of addressing the unjust plight of privileged twenty somethings in the first world, with tales of my professional extremely amateur athletic pursuits.