After the big achievement of reaching my #RU2C goal yesterday, it’s not surprise that today felt a little flat.

I think this is the flip-side of event motivation; once an event is complete, suddenly that drive you had evaporates.

After the event – when motivation doesn’t happen

I remember an interview with Ben Smith @The401Challenge after he completed his epic challenge of 401 marathons in as many days. He talked of this situation, only magnified so much more as his challenge was colossal in pretty much every sense. It’s a something to be aware of should you ever take on a challenge.

Does this mean I would caution against setting yourself challenges? Of course not. When I say to ‘be aware of it’, I mean that you ought to acknowledge that it’s actually a pretty ‘normal’ response.Something that has been a major part of your life suddenly isn’t there and you’re left with a void to deal with. It takes a certain amount of getting used to, that’s all.

I would say that the positives massively outweigh the negatives. My only caution would be surrounding the choosing of a challenge. It needs to be a big enough stretch to make you have to work at it, but not so much that it is more than likely unattainable*. And I think it’s something that comes with experience as you learn to what extent you are able to push yourself. Understanding your boundaries and limits is a very personal journey and one to be taken carefully.

I’m talking as if my overarching challenge this time, is over. Of course that’s got a whole week to go! Today is only #REDBED Day 24!

* This again is a very personal judgment. Those taking on such challenges are fully aware of the odds of success.

Writing is the hardest part (for me)!

As predicted, it’s the blogging part of #REDBED that has given me the toughest challenge. For those who have followed my blog over the 5.5 years, you’ll have noticed that, certainly over the last 2 years, I’ve not exactly been prolific in my writing. But then I knew that it was something I wanted to work on and thus it made sense within the frame of the challenge. I never specified that the blogs would be running related throughout, but it did strike me as a problem to be creating a run-based challenge and then talking about other unrelated stuff.

My appetite for writing posts hinges on whether I’d actually want to read them. As such in the past when I haven’t given myself a publication deadline some of those drafted posts never made it to being published. In fact the majority I deleted recently as they ceased to be relevant. Only one post remains in draft which relates to a point in time immediately prior to my breakdown and I’ve left it as a reminder of how far I’ve come since.

There will be plenty of writing coming in 2018 as I have several big projects coming up which I think will lend themselves to being blogged about!

Today’s Run

My original plan was to disappear off into the hills and go for a bounce around a trail or two. That was until I finished work this morning and found the whole of Stockport gridlocked in traffic chaos! Lyme Park had already put out a message on social media that they were full (the car parking has been adversely impacted by the wet weather which has restricted what was already limited parking). And whilst I could have run up into the Park, I only wanted to do 5k today after the heavy running schedule of the past 3.5 weeks. I’ll cover all that in tomorrow’s blog.

So today’s 5k ended up being tarmac based. Not particularly inspiring or enjoyable, but at least I was traveling faster than the stationary traffic on the roads along which I was running!