Chocolate Chip Cookies And Motivation

Friday, January 27, 2012 · Mike Davis

Thursday, January 26, 2012

A new motivation! ?

Today the mental battle was certainly there as I drove back and forth to Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts, I was tired and I had no partners to account too. So did I run? Heck yeah, despite some tired legs from my big increase in distance (6.5 to 7.0), I put on a pair of shorts (yay), my shoes and just put one foot in front of the other. I would like to say I was motivated by my tremendous dedication to running, but there actually was an underlying motivation besides my desire to stay with my training plan. Last night after my blog post, I was going nuts wanting something or to be more exact a chocolate chip cookie. My wife informed me that I would easily have one as we had some premade cookie dough in the fridge. Hmm! She went upstairs and I pondered the idea for a couple minutes, looked at the container and directions and the fact that I could have a cookie, okay cookies within 16 minutes, and made my mind up. I spooned out 8 blobs of dough onto the cookie sheet, waited for the oven to get up to about half the required temperature and put them in the oven. About 16 maybe 18 minutes later I was pulling chocolate chip cookies off the cookie sheet and chasing them down with a glass of milk. Three cookies later (big cookies), I felt sick! I can honestly say I have not done such a thing in many years.

So, getting in my running shoes despite tired legs was as much motivated by my cookie plunge as it was staying with my weekly training plan. Anyhow, I didn’t give myself anytime to consider changing my mind, I just hit the road. Nothing different than the previous two days, I ran an out and back to the Wildlife Refuge, but my lonesome. Don’t know if it was the fact that I ran by myself or my guilt was behind it, but I ran 3 minutes faster than we had run the past two days. I really didn’t look at my watch, but just kind of went along at what I thought was a relaxed pace. I tried to take in my surroundings and just enjoy being out on a great day and I think I did. I did speed up the last half mile when I realized I had a chance to finish my 7 miles under an hour. That would be the competitor in me.

After my run, I hurried home as I wanted to do some needed strength training. Again, I think I was motivated by my cookie incident, and also that I needed a second day this week of strength training. Did a bunch of core and upper body stuff and finished with some foam rolling and other stretching. Altogether I was pleased and felt a lot better about my stumble.

Three consecutive days of running at least 7 miles and I’m thrilled with that as I continue this challenging journey. Tomorrow I’m going to run an easy 4 as I will give my legs some rest before 12 on Saturday. Not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t had the chocolate chip cookies. Do the math and you will figure out I’m still in a bit of trouble!

See you tomorrow!

mike