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Hello friends of Sarah! My name is MacKensie and I blog over here. I'm a 22-year-old single lady from Florida obsessed with her dog and her blog. I write about things I like: music, clothes, cooking and, the reason I'm here today, running.
I've run four half-marathons (including one last month in Seattle which you can read about here) and I hope to run a full one in the near future. I started running track sophomore year of high school (wowzas, that was back in 2004) without any sort of previous warm feelings toward the sport; to be honest, I did it because for the first time in my life I had hips, a donk and consequently stretch marks, but no matter how superficial the reasons, I'm so glad I did.
After running the 800 (1/2 mile or two laps around the track) all season, I quickly learned that I am not a fast short distance runner and ended up joining the cross country team the following fall. It was then that I fell in love with long distance running (and really saw and felt changes in my bod). You can read all about my love affair with running here, but today I'm here to talk about motivation.
Sarah asked me to share some of my tips and tricks for staying motivated to stay fit and keep running, and although I wish I could say I never struggle with staying motivated, the truth is no matter how much I love running, I'd rather be sitting on the couch watching "Friends" at any given time that I should be spending sweatin' it out (I may or may not be procrastinating on a sweat sesh as I type this entry).
One thing that I find pretty helpful is keeping track of all my runs. I have used hand-written journals, calendars, etc. in the past, but I usually end up losing them (I'm an incredibly messy person), so for the past couple months I've been using RunKeeper.com. Maybe it's just the endorphins, but there's just something awesome and motivational about writing down mileage and then seeing it all displayed together in the easily accessible form of an app. Also, the dates of runs are displayed right next to each other, and since I share everything via InstaGram (@MacKensieG) there's no pretending like I didn't just go seven days without a single run.
Another issue I used to run into was not knowing how long my run was. Often times I would just set out to run for a certain amount of time, but then I had no idea if I was improving on my mileage, so my Garmin GPS watch has made a huge difference. It was pretty dang expensive, though, so unless you know you will be using it for a while, you could stick to Nike+ apps for the iPhone or even RunKeeper keeps track of mileage (although I'm not sure of how accurate it is).
Lastly, there's no better motivator than to sign up for a race. Most people hold off on signing up because they're afraid they won't be ready by the time it comes around, but what better reason to get off the couch and train than knowing you already invested money in a race? You're committed, and if it's a fun race with a little twist (like the Wine & Dine Half Marathon that takes place at Disney and starts at 10 pm) you have even more reason to not want to miss it for anything!
...and when all else fails, I just think about the massive amounts of cake, cookies, gummy bears, etc. I just ate. Yea.. that happens more than I'd like to admit.
Thank you so much for having me today, Sarah! Good luck, friends, and just keep running!
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