It’s very interesting to experience the several phases of a run. I’m sure many people go through different ones and perhaps even more or less numbers of phases than I do. I usually go through five.
There’s the first phase, where you feel like you own the world. The second phase is where you immediately regret having ever went outside in the first place. The third phase, I would say the worst phase, is where you contemplate how shameful it would actually be to just fall to the ground and lie there until someone comes to get you. The fourth phase is where your body is so fed up with your so called “will” and “urge to turn your life around” that it just gives up and you keep running. The fifth and final phase, the phase that makes it all worth it, is when you stop your run, knowing you’ve given it your all, and again, feel like you own the world.
The hard part of running, or working out, or doing anything in general, is that the first phases of the activity are always the worst. It is as if those moments are designed to test you, to gauge how badly you want to succeed. It’s like a hill where after your first few steps you think, “Pshh, I got this, I could do this all day” only to, minutes later, be crawling on the ground begging the gods for forgiveness.
The trick is to accept and even welcome these phases because each new one you enter puts you closer towards the end. Oh, you have a cramp? Fantastic, means my body is in the making up excuses phase. That one usually comes before I start to really hit a stride.
Be happy to enter into new phases and understand them. Tell yourself that this is phase so and so, and it comes before this and that. Your mind will be tricked into thinking that the excuses and fatigue come naturally and will pass naturally. If you master this, pretty soon you’ll be able to trick your body into passing through the phases faster and so you can hit your stride sooner and progress to levels you didn’t even think of.
I Hate Eating Right 