Motivation

Like most people, I find it hard to stay motivated to exercise all the time. When a friend of mine worked close by, I had no problem meeting her daily for a quick run… rain or shine. But when she changed jobs, the struggle to stay motivated resurfaced again.

After some trial and error, I found three things that helped me the most:

1. Setting a specific time to run. Just as I did when running with my friend, I set a specific time each day that was dedicated to my workout. I noticed that if I didn’t do that, it was too easy to come up with a million and one projects that were more important to do first and all of the sudden the day had passed. Scheduling my workout in advance, preferably at the same time each day, has made a huge difference.


2. Adding books on tape to my ipod. Listening to music is great, and some songs get me going the minute I hear them. But after about a week of running, I noticed I would just tune out the music and get really bored on my run. Listening to a book on tape or an interview with an interesting person made a huge difference. It almost felt like chatting with a friend and, before I noticed, I had completed my full workout.


3. Nike+ gadget. This is that little sensor you can put inside your Nike shoes or simply attach to the laces on any kind of a shoe. While you run or walk, the sensor communicates with your ipod nano or itouch letting you know how far you’ve run, how fast you’re going and how much further you have to go to complete your goal. You can also set up a power song that, with a press of a button, can come on right when you need to conquer that hill. At the end of a workout you may hear Lance Armstrong congratulate you on completing your fastest mile or longest workout.
   
   But the real advantages of using the Nike+ system, at least for me, are the features that you have available to you when you sync up your ipod with your computer. They include:

• Keeping track of all your workouts


• Setting up goals for yourself


• Creating challenges – for yourself or joining other teams and contributing the miles you ran or walked to an overall team goal


• Creating a cartoon version of yourself (perfect opportunity to try out that pink hair color you’ve been thinking about) that can then become your screen saver and praise you when you workout or scold you (gently) when you don’t.


• Adding any of the above feature to your Facebook or MySpace page so that your friends can cheer you on – and maybe even get inspired to work out themselves.

Given a choice, I still prefer to have a friend at my side when I run. But with this little gadget, her and I can still share our workouts and keep each other motivated – even if it is in cyberspace.