Bad runs happen way more often than we would like for them to. It’s a frustrating part of a runner’s life. We learn to take the good with the bad. While we vow to move onward and upward every time we have a bad run, we still sometimes beat ourselves up over it. Thoughts such as, “I’m just not cut out to be a runner”, “I’m not a ‘real’ runner” or “Maybe I should take up knitting instead” can irrationally start to flood our mind. When you find this happening to you, take out a piece of paper and dissect the run to identify what went wrong.
Aside from obvious reasons, like an upset stomach or bad weather, it’s not always easy to initially identify what might have caused the run to go south. If you look a little bit deeper into what’s going on, you might be able to pinpoint what happened.
Here are 10 questions to ask yourself to help identify why your run was bad:
1. How many hours of sleep did I get last night?
2. How much sleep have I gotten all week?
3. Am I stressed about work more so than normal?
4. Am I dealing with unusual amount of family stress?
5. Did I workout too many days in a row?
7. Did I hydrate well and eat my normal healthy diet this week?
8. Were my expectations for my run reasonable?
9. Did I do a proper warm-up before jumping into my workout?
10. Am I just being too hard on myself?
This post was originally published on WomensRunning.com where I blog weekly.
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