Recently I’ve been lost in the frustrating world of the un-motivated. I’m afraid of becoming indifferent to my training. I run when I’m supposed to, and often longer than I’m supposed to, but it’s getting harder—for my muscles, yes, but the challenge (and I knew this was coming) is to find strength in my mind.

It seems silly. I read the books, magazine articles, blogs and forum posts of elite runners. I listen to their pre-recorded Nike workouts, and their podcasts. I watch their videos. And they speak to me, telling me exactly what I need. Visualization, focus, maintained intensity, a mantra, balance in my cadence. Forget about the pain—remember why you run, why you woke up at 4:30am to shimmy into your spandex, strap on your shoes, stretch you tired muscles and make your way outside into the cold morning to run six miles before a full day of work.

I assume that the collective wisdom of Amby Burfoot, Kara Goucher, Joan Benoit Samuleslon, Alan Webb, Ryan Hall, and Bart Yasso (to name a few) will give me a couple of the tools I need to run the necessary 40+ miles per week I need under my belt in order to hit my goal for the New York Marathon in October. For the first 6 miles of my 16 mile training run today, I’m sure my thoughts will echo their expert advice. But then I’ll remember that I have 10 miles left, at which point I will be left to my own devices and I’m certainly not immune to destructive and intentional attempts to stop running. I have no shame in the excuses I will come up with, in fact I believe that in fully understanding why I run, I have to embrace the reasons why I think I shouldn’t run.

This is what I’ll tell myself over and over again during those 10 miles:

• You ran 6 miles yesterday, no wonder you’re tired. Stop and do some Yoga
• Just run 8 miles now, and 8 miles before dinner tonight
• God, is this boring. I need better music, go home and get some better music
• I am going climbing tonight, I need to save some energy for that
• I don’t have any runs scheduled for tomorrow, I’ll just run the rest of this work out tomorrow

I call this my leech mind; it’s slow and sucks energy away from what could be a great run. Leech mind leaves no room for the motivational efforts of Kara and Amby. But I will still run the 16 miles, and I’ll make my 40+ mile goal for the week. This is because I believe that bananas, lots and lots of bananas, are my antidote for leech mind. And that’s what makes all of this so silly; I haven’t figured out how something tangible can cause havoc on something so intangible. Today I’ll eat my bananas until I’m just shy of a potassium overload, I’ll run my 16 miles, I’ll love the last 10, and I’ll try to (once again) to understand why I do it.