14 weeks.

14 weeks, 39 hours, 155 miles, 25,200 calo­ries, and 2 pairs of shoes.

Those num­bers blow me away every time I look at them. They are, in a sense, the com­piled amount of time an energy it took to get ready for the Indi­anapo­lis Half Marathon.

Tak­ing a cue from my lovely wife, I decided that it was the per­fect time in my life to truly make a change and get into shape. Hon­estly, exer­cise goals have never really stuck with me in the past and I would typ­i­cally get bored and stop after a week of work. This time it was different.

This go around I decided to do things dif­fer­ently to keep moti­va­tion and desire at a rel­a­tively high level.

1) micro-rewards

I would give myself lit­tle rewards as I hit impor­tant milestones.

Fin­ished the first week of run­ning? I bought myself an iPhone armband.

Ran all five days that week? I got a new run­ning shirt, or maybe even socks.

These may seem like lame presents to myself, but they were things to look for­ward to and in the end would help accom­plish my final goal.

2) exter­nal motivation

I knew that one of the only ways I would com­plete this or at least con­tinue in stay­ing moti­vated would be through the help of pos­i­tive rein­force­ment from friends and fam­ily. Know­ing that my wife was going though the same train­ing was a god-send. It was com­fort­ing to know that both of us were reach­ing for the same goal and helped keep moti­va­tion high.

I also would talk with friends and fam­ily that had inter­est in exer­cise and nutri­tion. By get­ting their advice, or even just hear­ing about things to avoid made train­ing that much eas­ier. For every­one that let me com­plain about run­ning in the rain, icing my knee, thank you so much.

3) SIGNING UP

The biggest moti­va­tor was also the eas­i­est thing of the whole process — SIGNING UP. By sim­ply sign­ing up an pay­ing the race entry fee, I instantly com­mit­ted myself to run­ning the half marathon. Hand­ing over money made it a “real” thing that I couldn’t back out of and would need to see thru until the end.

There is noth­ing more intim­i­dat­ing and moti­vat­ing than get­ting a race con­fir­ma­tion email or text. It meant that there was now a very real count­down in place chas­ing me every­where I went.

Four­teen weeks. It makes me so happy to see what I’ve accom­plished since July, and in turn, moti­vates me to do more.

What are you going to be proud of in 14 weeks?

October 20, 2011

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