Is it the cold? Is it the expectations?

This past Tuesday, on the first above freezing day we've witnessed since --- well, the last time I went running! I popped out of bed, threw on my gear, laced up my shoes, and covered an unmeasured distance of probably around 2 miles. Hitting the pavement again was nice. What was nicer was the pleasure of just moving my body, getting my heart rate up, knowing that there was no need to run more than a single block because being out in the first place was a step in the right direction.

Which leads me to thinking, sure, the cold weather is a convenient excuse for not running, and if really all that was preventing me was cold weather, well, I have an underutilized gym membership with treadmills that I can knock off some miles on. But maybe what's been preventing my runs is merely an avoidance of mounting expectations. Running 1, 2 miles a day is easy, but later committing to 3, 4 every day when all you want to do is stay in bed, it becomes so much easier to succumb to sleepiness pangs, or 'i don't want to' pangs. And once you've skipped once and offered credence to the excuses, all confidence is lost that you can will yourself at a future date to do the "responsible" thing, or the thing that you "should" do. The instinct becomes, "I don't wanna!" and there we go, I go from wannabe runner to a bona fide fake runner.

Which leads me to wonder: there was a reason I committed to this is the first place, I WANTED to run, I WANTED to accomplish something, how can I reclaim that? Maybe the step is to do a few runs with no expectations for running more than a single block. Just lace up the shoes and go. Because really, that's the hard part right there: simple getting dressed and getting out of the house.