About running

It has been almost a month since I've started running 5km daily, and thankfully I've quite the achieved that goal. It's not easy to motivate yourself to run daily, when you've all sorts of crap happening: 1 hr before you'll be late for work, a delay in waking hour, feeling just plain tired, and even because I'll be out the whole day. Generally speaking, I find running best before I go to work and I totally abhor running during evening times.

Let's say I've work to start at 8am-6pm, and my work place is at Changi, approximately 1hr 10 mins away. I got to leave my house at 6.40am and I'll probably reach home at 7.20pm. When do you think is a better time to run?

IT seems obvious that after work would be better. But, I hate to do so. In fact I don't get to go home on times, sometimes I'll probably leave the airport later at 6.30pm. When I reach home at 7.50pm, I'll eat my dinner and guess what? I can't run immediately and I'll forgo running. I would rather wake at 5.30 to do my run. Assuming I wake so early, I'll be able to have my breakfast, run and read my papers before I leave my house. I can then go on to have an enjoyable day ahead.

But why do I run everyday? How can I get the motivation to run? I run everyday not for reason like slimming down or becoming fit primarily. To me, they are secondary reasons, and reasons that will not be strong enough to keep me running my dailies. I run because I have to. I have an organizer where every day, I have to fulfill 4 thing s. They are Book, News, Run, Quiet time. These are 4 things I make myself go through every day. I don't have a chance to not run, so while I can, I just go forward and run.

Additionally, I don't believe that I should be motivated to run. Motivation doesn't come before action. When you work for your pay, does your boss give you it before your month of work ends? Or is it otherwise? In respect, motivation comes when you take consistent action in to fulfill what you have to.

Recently, however, I get cramps 1/2 way into the runs. I get it around 15mins + and it makes it painful to continue. I've always thought it was due to improper stretching or my strides being too small, but I just found out during today's run that it should be just psychological. When I keep my mind off the cramp and think of things like work or even merely my performance of the game of DOTA just before, the cramp disappears. I guess I'll think of ways to keep myself occupied so I won't think of creating cramps in my legs :)