I did my race. Now what?

As a runner myself, I set goals to conquer and work hard to do so. Some of those goals include;

1- Running faster

2- Run a longer distance

3- Finish/win a race

The one thing I notice in many of us runners is that when we set up a race challenge whether it is a simple 5K or a full marathon we train hard for it. Every single run we do is towards that challenge. Race day comes.. our heart beats faster as the gun shot gets closer and closer.

As we take off on our race, our minds take off as well and lots of thoughts about our training rush into our heads.. (did I train enough?. Should I increase my pace now?. Am I going too fast? Shit what am I doing here?)

After a few minutes of this another set of thoughts come into play;

(How much longer is left? Who is wearing perfume? OMG did he poop his shorts? yup, yes he did. What was she thinking wearing that for the race? oops, some one forgot to put on a bra... and so on). When we finally get a few yards away from the finish line, we say (Dam, I did it).

Whoever is waiting for us at the finish line give us our pat on the back saying.. “way to go man, we are proud of you, now lets go eat”. We get home, shower, post our report on DM, FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace whatever site you have, and after a few min the question syncs.. Now what?

What’s next?. Some of us go through a process where it’s hard to find a reason to go back out and run because there is no more challenge. Going out for a run becomes the challenge. For some others is worse specially if your race did not go as planned or are not happy with the results.. Our minds just close into a state of whining. (I could have done better. I can’t believe I failed. and so) on and no matter what others say, that is all that is in that runner’s mind. How do we go from “running is part of our routine” to “why do I want to run?”