The Secret of Effective Motivation? (Read 419 times)

 

So you're saying I could be a 3:54 miler? I don't buy that at all (30 sec per mile) but it's a typical runners world thing to say.

 

Have seen this discussion for many years. I think it's a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic only carries you so far.

I don't remember the distance they were running but I'm sure it was much farther than one mile.

Coincidentally I attended a workshop last weekend discussing about intrinsic value.

I agreed with spaniel. Extrinsic motivation burns relatively faster. Once the motivation/interest is lost, the activity won't last long. For myself, I try to seek my intrinsic motivation - running for health. However, if it is for health, I am running too much. I am training for a marathon because of the extrinsic motivation - my ego - to show off how fast I can run. Working in progress!

NHLA - I was searching for this on the internet and couldn't find it.  I'd love to read this piece.

RW did an piece on this years ago.  They called it internal &  external motivation.

The runners who used external motivation ran 30 sec per mile faster.

Tief & Jeff  I tried to find it but couldn't  RW does not seem to have a place to search for old articles. I know its at least four years ago because I stopped taking the magazine.

 

You only need to look at the past year, that's how frequently they re-use every article.

LOL  sure it will come back around.

Also, http://www.runnersworld.com/running-tips/use-your-mind-reach-your-running-goals

 

This is a nice article. I particularly like how he describes the phases of a run. It does seem that he doesn't directly answer the question posed  Do you see competition as another aspect of running’s intrinsic value, or does competition (or at least the challenge of a race that will be timed) simply provide an external reason to get fit enough to appreciate the intrinsic value of the run, such as your pack did. But instead sort of thinks of competition (presumably competition against oneself as, like you alluded to, us hobbyjoggers are not really competing in the truest sense) as it's own thing, a game we play. That makes sense to me. It's a little numbers game.

 

As pertains to the original article I posted, after thinking about it, I guess one also has to take into account what one's definition of "success" really is. Could be an objective or subjective thing I suppose.

That was a nice article. I'm glad I read it--it's not the kind of thing I would normally read. I have a hard time relating to this subject of motivation because--and I'm not trying to sound superior or anything but--I honestly cannot remember not being a runner. I can remember certain times in my life when I was doing little to no running, but that's not the same thing I don't think.

I was always active as a kid and always playing sports, usually outside. I was always one of the fastest kids but rarely the fastest--in my neighborhood, on my little league team, in gym class, etc. And my dad was a runner. He was slow as hell but he loved running and he ran all year round in all weather, until he couldn't anymore. So it was just something people did, they ran. For sport, for transportation from the ball field or from a friends house, or whatever.

When I was a freshman in high school and owing to a December birthday that ended my hockey career early, it just made sense to go out for winter track. Then spring track. I ran the 600 indoors and the 800 outdoors and a lot of relays. I never thought I'd run longer than 10 miles in my life and I couldn't understand why anyone would, but I was a runner. I was not outstanding but I was pretty good. I got a lot of 2nds and 3rds, once in a while I won a race in a dual meet if we weren't running all our best guys, and I got to run on a lot of winning relay teams. I went to states and didn't make the final, etc.

If I'd gone to a D3 school I probably would have run in college but I went to a school wit a top 10 xc program and not much of a track team--basically the xc runners would run some track meets in the winter and spring but they were a distance team only. So I played rugby and drank beer. But I was still a runner. I'd run in the off season and during rugby I'd be one of the "fast" guys. On our road runs I'd be one of the guys out in front, the ones that looked like "real" runners, and for whom the 3-mile warm up loop before practice was not a big deal.

In my 20's I didn't run much. I skied a lot, raced mountain bikes, played hockey, did other things. But I always owned a pair of trainers and if you'd asked me to go for a run, I would go because it was still a normal thing. I would go running on the beach in the summer time for no reason other than I liked it and it seemed like a normal thing to do. I would do trail runs just because. Never consistently and never high mileage, but often enough to say I was a runner.

When I was 29 and living in Northern CA a friend asked me if I wanted to run the Big Sur marathon with him. A marathon was on my bucket list and so I agreed, having no idea. I had never run longer than 10 miles in my life to that point. I ran it off of minimal training (though I didn't know that at the time) and it was horrible, but I finished. I was pretty sure I'd never do that again. I didn't consider myself a long distance runner, still don't actually.

Almost a year to the day after that first marathon, having hardly run at all in that year, I woke up one day with the urge to run. I put on my shoes and went out the door with no real plan. I wound up going about 8 miles and was sore for days. But then I ran again. And again and pretty soon I was running pretty much every day for some reason. This was April of 2000. I decided at that point that I couldn't let my one horrible marathon stand and so, naively perhaps, I decided to qualify for and run the next year's (2001) Boston Marathon. I figured if I was able to do that then I could consider myself retired from marathons for good and go back to being a regular person who runs a bit.

That was 32,000 miles and 133 races (16 marathons) ago. Alas.

There have always been goals, from finishing a marathon, to qualifying for Boston, to sub-3, to sub 2:50, to sub-5, to sub-17, etc. But honestly none of those has ever really been why I run. Basically running just filled in all the space that used to be filled with other things, before kids and a career and general domestication left me with only very specific time and energy slots for extra-curricular activities. And the goals (the games) were just there to make the experience more interesting, or perhaps at times to make it easier to explain. I dunno.

One time my next door neighbor asked me how I stayed so focused on a single goal all throughout the year, assuming I was singularly focused on the Boston Marathon at that point. I told her I almost never thought about the marathon when I was out running. She looked at me kind of funny and asked then what did I think about during all those many miles, most of them early in the morning.

I said, "I usually just think about a cool, fall day."

She just kind of looked at me and so I explained: "I think about one of those days when I'm out early on a Sunday morning and the air is crisp and cool and I'm warmed up but not really sweating and not breathing hard at all but just rolling along, effortlessly. And there's just the smell of the fall air, and the rustling sound of leaves blowing in the breeze and everything just feels perfect. And you come over a small rise and the wind hits you in the face and almost takes your breath away. And you can't imagine being anywhere else and doing anything else at that moment."

"Huh," she said.

"Yeah."

So when the author says "When people start running, they do so for instrumental reasons ..." I have to take his word for it. I can't figure out when I started running, let alone why.

Or as my friend Jeff once wrote:

Why I Run
I can't speak for anyone else, but at a certain point the experience of running surpassed in value, and by a pretty wide margin, my desire to make sense out of it. 

I don't know why I run. I don't know why I race. I don't know why I compete. I don't need to know. Because running means more to me than curiosity. It goes deeper than knowledge. I run. I compete. I move on down the line. I'm a runner. 

For us runners, the question of “why” is pretty moot. Not because it may not be interesting, or important, from a certain point of view, but because we’ve left the question of the meaning of running behind. After all the questions have been asked, and all the answers given, in spite of the disagreement on essences, physiology, rationales, training strategies, trail running, road racing, i-pod wearing, mid-foot striking, turnover cadences, arm carriages, Jack Daniels, Arthur Lydiard, 20 miles a week or 100, 5k or the 50k, whether it's really the Miles of Trials or the Trial of Miles, after all the words have been spoken and keyboards have been pounded, meanings given and ideologies subverted... After all this, we runners bend down and tighten the laces, open the door, brace for the cold and are renewed: another godawful, glorious, and meaningless 8 miler.

http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/philosophy-and-the-serious-runner

 

Nothing about 30 secs faster, but lots on instrumental and intrinsic motivation in running. Even some philosophical stuff for Jeff to eat up or tear up.

I really enjoyed this article, but I've always thought of running as part meditation.