Motivation, Where Forth Are Thou?

I wouldn't generally call myself a very lazy person. I mean I do have my lazy streaks in me and all that but I don't fear hard work. But of late, that lazy streak has materialized ten fold when it comes to working out. I love running. Those of you who've been reading my blog for quite sometime would know that I love running. I think I've even posted about my love for running quite a while back.

But lately, no, let me rephrase that. For quite a long while now, I've totally neglected my running. And it's all due to my laziness or rather my total lack of motivation for running. Everyday I tell myself that the moment I get home from work, I'll put on my dusty (and I really mean dusty) pair of running shoes and go for my run. But then the moment I reach home, I'll have some sort of stupid excuse for not running.

Even wifey is I think by now fed-up of my excuses for not running. Every ounce of my body feels like running but the will and desire to run just isn't there. I would put it all down to me being plain lazy. I've gone through this phase before where I stopped running for close to a whole year, then one fine day, I put on my shoes and started running fanatically again to the point of actually getting myself fit enough to go for a 10k race.

And just when I'm all fit and used to running again, the lazy bug will just creep in. It'll start with a simple excuse like, 'I'm not running today cos I need to rest my legs'. Then it'll be, 'the weather is just too hot to run'. Next it'll be, 'it looks like rain out there'. Or even, 'it's not safe to run, I might get kidnapped by aliens'. You get my drift, ya? It's all just one excuse after another.

Throughout my life, I was never a very sporty type of person. Yeah, I played football and all that but if given the choice I would have rather stayed home and slept. But there are only two real sports that I've been very passionate and fanatical about. One is running and the other was martial arts. The martial arts part I gave up a long time ago but running is still a part of me. Well, not for a while though.

I'm trying to find that spark that I need to get out there and run like before. Maybe it's cos of the lack of a running partner. I use to run with one of my best buddies a long time back. We were both (and I think he still is) fanatical about running. He used to live just a block away from me and we'd force ourselves to get up at 5.00am every morning and run for at least 9 kilometres almost every day and we both kept on pushing each other.

And it worked. When either one of us lacked motivation to run, the other would be there to build it up again. The thing is through time, work and family life got in the way and it got harder and harder for us to meet up to run. We both had odd working hours and sometimes we worked late into the early mornings and getting up at 5am was proving to be extremely difficult.

These days wifey tries to motivate me as best as she can and as much as I would love for her to run alongside me, she's not into the kind of running I do. She's more of the leisurely run kind of person. I'm more of the competitive running kind of person. But I seriously need to get out there and running again. I'm at a level where I'm completely unhealthy right now and that is not a good sign.

I even started on some indoor exercises a couple of days ago to try to motivate myself again. Well, it was for a whole 10 minutes, but at least it was way more than I've been doing the past god knows how long. I need a proper workout program but most of all what I really need is my motivation back! In my mind the need to run is there, but in my heart the desire is pretty clouded up at the moment. Any ideas on how I can find that motivation and desire again?
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