Motivation: Just take that first step
August 29, 2007 — Joe EnglishIt seems like every day, I have someone that is asking me how to get started; how to keep going; how to keep after their goal? How should they start their training? How can they get motivated to run today? How should they do their track workout when they’re so tired after work?
The answer is to just take that first step.
Just take one and then more will follow. I promise.
For the new runner, buy yourself some new running shoes, put them on and go outside. Tell yourself that you’re going for a walk. And then, when you feel it, just run a little. Run for two minutes and then take a break. Then try it again. Don’t worry about the fact that you feel really tired. That’s normal if it’s new to you. Just go out and take those first steps. More will follow.
For those of you that are in a tough spot in your training, it goes the same for you. There will be days when you really don’t want to walk out that door. There will be days when you question why it is that you’re doing this - why you’re running. But just put your running clothes on, go outside and see what happens. Leave your watch at home. Don’t make a plan. Just take the first step and see where you go from there.
And for those that get out to the track and drop your shoulders when you read the workout, just start warming up. Start that first interval. Once you’ve started, you are three-quarters of the way there. The inertia of the workout will carry you through once you start it.
But if you don’t start, you don’t have that inertia to keep pulling you along.
As they say in the world of physics, “a body at rest, stays at rest. A body in motion, stays in motion.”
All you have to do is take the first step to start yourself in motion, then you’ll remember that you’re a runner and you’ll keep going from there.
Just go out there and take that first step. More will follow. I promise.
Coach Joe
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Joe English
coachdeanhebert
teejford
August 29, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Coach!
So right. Innumerable circumstances exist in all of our lives as we take that first step, but one thing is constant; a sweet, peaceful place is waiting for those willing to put forth the effort of taking that first step. Once we see how enjoyable and rewarding it truly is, we need it like food or air.
Tracy
August 30, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Joe,
It’s so simple but so hard. The key is to break it down to the very smallest action that can be taken and take that one action. Like eating an elephant…
Coach Dean
August 31, 2007 at 6:27 am
I still consider myself a new runner, even though I have been at this for over a year. I learn something, or find a new muscle every time I go out… and that is after over 800 miles, 3 pairs of shoes and more Gu packs than I care to count. As I looked back through my old posts, the common thread that I saw over time was simple. Commitment.
This is why I would never be a good coach. I cannot find a way to sugar coat that word. Yes, just take the first step. BUT… Don’t take that FIRST step unless you understand and agree to the fact that (unless you are physically unable to anymore) there can never be a LAST step. You have to accept this as a lifestyle change.
I wrote a post about this some time back:
http://dabigleap.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/whats-the-secret/
It’s not pretty, but it’s true. I tried to “start” a million times. But until I accepted the fact that I could never “stop”, I failed.
August 31, 2007 at 7:35 am
I might have to disagree with you on that point.
What is more important than accepting that you can “never stop”, is to have goals and work toward them. Everyone wants and needs different things from their running. It may be completely acceptable to stop - whether it be to take time off or to just stop and take a break during a run for some reason.
I once stopped during a race to go into an open-air market and, honestly, it was the highlight of the race. My goal that day was to have fun and that unscheduled stop was in line with that goal.
Have fun out there.
Coach Joe
August 31, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Sorry Joe… Didn’t make my point very clearly there. I completely agree with you that stopping during a race or taking a break from training is not a bad thing.
My comment was referring to the overall commitment you have to make in order to “get started”. Buying a pair of running shoes is easy. It’s running in them every day (or most days, anyway) that’s the hard part. Until you are willing to make THAT commitment, you just have nice shoes.
Like you said, just take the first step. Do the first part of the workout. Then finish it. And THEN… keep coming back, because it IS worth it.
Sorry for the long comments… I’ve written this one 50 times and I’m still not sure it makes sense. I’ll stop hogging your bandwidth now…
September 1, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Thanks for pitching this one out there Coach. I think it’s a very interesting subject..and one worth pondering.
I am a “masters” runner who’s logged hundreds of road miles and some extraordinary race memories. As a woman who grew up before the effect of Title IV was felt at the public school level, I can tell you that for myself - and lots of the young women I grew up with - participating in sports was just not positioned as a priority, (let alone participating as a competitor). Horror of horrors, competing against young men was simply not contemplated.
It took a tremendous amount of social change and a monumental shift in the way media depicts images of women athletes for many of us to lace up a pair of running shoes and see where our spirit and sheer will could take us.
As any runner will tell you, the sport is an amazing combination of will over pain, triumph over failure, and performance over psychological barriers of all kinds. I think in some ways “older” women who have found the athlete inside themselves work harder and compete with such tenacity because many of us discovered the spirit of our athletic abilities later in life, oftentimes at a life stage at which we begin to re-define who we are… not out of the way we look, or attract others, but rather, out of who we really are as human beings and what we’re capable of doing. It’s an extraordinarily important thing to find out about yourself, one that young women were deprived of for too long.
For many women, the training hours are the “me” hours; the time to think, to push ourselves, a time to serve ourselves alone and no one else. I know that for me, my hours on the road are meditative, my thinking planning and dreaming time…except when I’m doing speedwork…but that’s another story.
I have to tell you that I am sincerely dissapointed in Ms. Wittenberg’s comments about female runners. Honey, if women were “embarrassed to me out there with the men acting like determined athletes”, trust me, they wouldn’t have trained for the race, signed up and paid the entry fee , then gotten up at 5:30 AM to stand at the starting line. Further, I caution all of us against non-critical “consensus” thinking. At every race I’ve ever attended there have been PLENTY of men in the middle and the back of the pack, sheepishly hanging around by the latrines, NOT warming up, NOT doing leg strides. C’mon Mary.
One final comment. It’s really important that we not judge human behavior through the lense of one gender over the other. The fact of the matter is men and women ARE different! There, I’ve said it. We don’t think the same, we don’t look the same, we don’t act the same and we don’t commpete the same. Why does Ms. Wittenberg judge and define female competitiveness, indeed seriousness of dedication to our sport, through the lense of observed male behavior? Again I say, c’mon Mary.
Ok, well I guess I’ve said my peace. Again, thanks for this challenging topic Coach Joe!
September 1, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Oops -sorry for the typo in my post above! Of course, I meant Title IX!