Consistency. The mythical thing that will make everything fall into place and become joyful and easy… . Apparently. I spend enough time scrolling on social media to have read several idiotic takes on consistency and on how habit not motivation will build consistency. And I get it. I remember (vaguely) a short period of time where running was just something we did. We didn’t really think about doing it, we just did. It wasn’t a decision to make. But that time was brief and also, it might be fictional. Perhaps it was never like that. Perhaps getting out the door has always been the hardest part of running. My brain is good at making shit up and maybe remembering a time, whether it actually existed or not, where getting out to run was easy, isn’t a bad thing.

Anyway, there I was scrolling like we all know we shouldn’t and the claims about how to get your shit together were just getting more and more outrageous. Advice that seemed to boil down do ‘you just need to be disciplined and get up at 4am and exercise and drink your electrolyte infused water and eat the right macros, take the most expensive supplements on the market and here’s some guidance on what to say so you’re not seen as weak at work and then here’s your evening relaxation and skin care routine and and … I am exhausted and bemused just seeing the posts, never mind reading or engaging with any of it. It does however bring me back to a question – how do normal people get their shit together? Like not 4am runs every morning and mapped out to the second daily routines (It is now 19.02, time to relax for precisely 19 minutes) but normal. Normal as in, my job can be a bit random, sometimes the cat pukes on the bed at 3am throwing everything into chaos, or I was so busy that I am both completely dehydrated because I didn’t drink anything and desperate for a pee because I haven’t had time for a toilet stop or I am not going to the gym for love nor money today because – ew people or the world feels wrong and I need to hide under a blanket and cry. That sort of normal. Which reading it back might not in fact be normal. What I mean is, how, in all the chaos that is normal life and without the desire or will power to be really regimented, how do you build consistency? How do you get to habit, to where the brain just assumes you’re going to the gym or for a run so you don’t have to do battle with yourself each time? How do you get motivated enough to get past the need for motivation?

I know, if I could really figure that out and bottle it, I could stop with the academic nonsense and retire ungracefully. I don’t think there is just one answer though. I read a post that suggested you set an alarm with a motivational quote to get you up and out of bed – yeah that will elicit a sleepy string of expletives and not much else while I turn off the alarm, turn over and go straight back to sleep. Another post suggested sleeping in your gear. Yeah – the only time I will sleep in a sports bra is if I am too exhausted after a run to attempt getting out of it. Other suggestions included telling yourself you can come back if you still really don’t want to be out after ten minutes. That also doesn’t work because that is a given for me. If I am miserable I won’t force myself to push through. I am too old for that shit. Hard – sure. Miserable, nope. More suggestions – same time each day for exercise of some description – hello chaotic schedule. That might work if I went really early in the morning but anyone who has met me will know that that will go wrong very very quickly. If I don’t get 8 hours sleep a night for a period of time, armageddon will ensue. I am being negative. Sorry. Of course I will eventually (and into the summer it’s easier) get up early more consistently and run after work more consistently and just the line between doing hard and being miserable will move so I will do more. I know this. I just find all the social media stuff annoying and unhelpful because none of it strikes me as realistic but I also can’t quite shake myself free of the expectations that my ducks should be more in a row and I should be able to be more disciplined. (I know! I’m paying for therapy, I am working on the people pleasing good girl thing)

Anyway, given that I am too old to take the influencers seriously and too intelligent to believe the nonsense around fitness and health and wellbeing and getting your shit together that fills my feeds, I had to come up with something else to try and keep up motivation while re-developing habits. And what does work, always has worked for me, is a challenge, a medal and some sort of game. Ideally all three. The challenges we had set haven’t kept me going. I haven’t been able to work towards them and they haven’t provided the kick up the arse required. So just entering another race or setting a park run target or whatever isn’t going to work – its not immediate enough. So I decided I would try a virtual challenge, something that tracks as you go along rather than something that is just an end goal; something that provides interest over time and an incentive to reach the next thing and something that allows me to go at my pace. And of course I need a medal at the end. A quick google and I landed on the Conqueror Virtual Challenges. I signed up for a challenge (I’ll tell you more about which one and why that one etc next time) to see if it might just work and keep me motivated through the really hard bit of starting again.

Well, it did its first job which was to get me out today when I really just wanted to curl up and stare into space and work out how I managed to work all day without having anything to show for it. I went out only because I wanted to see if the app worked, if my strava would sync to it and what the look and feel of the app and challenge would be. So yeah – gamification works. For me anyway. I did 2 miles again. Run/Walk at 30/30 intervals. This time for the full two miles. I went the same mile out as previously but ran past a guy I know who was out chatting and we had a friendly exchange but I really didn’t want a second interaction on the way back so I turned off and went down hill. So I did run a slightly easier route in terms of slopes but I kept the run/walk going until the 2 mile beep on my watch. Then I walked the .70 of a mile home up the hill. Happy with that. Oh and me not wanting another interaction had nothing to do with the guy, I was a proper no people zone after work today.

Anyway, I will tell you more about the challenge and the app as I get into it but for now there is one thing I want to mention because it pissed me off as I was completing the registration on the app. It’s a distance challenge, right. You can count all sorts of exercise to contribute, all good. I like that because it makes it really inclusive. But then the app asked for me height and weight. Annoying in itself. It doesn’t need that to track distance travelled. It’s irrelevant to the thing the app is designed for. And then, as if asking for weight wasn’t bad enough, it asked for ideal weight. So there it is. Just like that we have again made the assumption that exercise and signing up to a challenge must be about weight loss. Had they asked these questions before I signed up for the challenge I wouldn’t have signed up. It annoys the hell out of me. There is no reason for the app to need the information. The challenges are based on distance traveled, that doesn’t change based on how much someone weighs. I am not doing a challenge to lose weight. I am not running to lose weight, I am not going to the gym to lose weight. I am not doing anything to lose weight. I am doing the things I am doing to be fitter and stronger and so I can keep having adventures. My weight bobbing about a bit is a side effect of that, not a driving force. Anyway, I had already bought the challenge, so I completed the app registration, gave them my current weight as both the current and ideal weight which might fry their algorithm a bit at least and got over myself.

Next time I will tell you where in the virtual world I am and why I chose it and any other musings. For now, I have some more marking to do – you know, academic and that time of year!