The Difference Between an Excuse and a Justification

I’ve noticed a “no excuses” theme when it comes to fitness motivation lately. Memes and quotes to remind us that skipping workouts are for lazy couch potatoes who aren’t serious enough to put in the hard work it takes to be successful.

I know this isn’t new and the message is typically valid; there are plenty of excuses we can make when it comes to fitting in our daily run, yet most of them are bullshit.

“I had a long day. I’m too tired. I have too much to do…”

“It’s raining. It’s windy. It’s too dark. It’s too cold. It’s too hot…”

“It’s too early. It’s too late. I don’t have enough time…”

I get it. We all know these feelings. Making the time to exercise can be a challenge, and some days it’s just enough to make us want to request a raincheck. When you feel a strong excuse coming on it’s time to find some motivation, dig deep, and get it done. After all, you’ll never regret a workout!

But what about the days when there’s a legitimate reason that you should sit one out and let your body recover?

The truth is, there’s a fine line between an excuse and a justification.  Sometimes we’re just not feeling it! It’s natural to try to talk ourselves out of a workout when the couch is calling, or when a workout seems a bit out of our comfort zone. These are usually the things that we can easily push through; if we balked at every minor problem we’d never get anything done. That being said, however, there comes a point where we should be able to tell the difference between our mind telling our body that we’re tired, and our body actually fighting back to try to convince our mind that we need to rest.

Part of being a seasoned runner is knowing who is talking…the mind or the body. It’s usually just an excuse when the mind is telling you to skip a run or to push off a workout until the following day. It’s often justified, however, if your body is feeling worn down from lack of sleep, overtraining, or even an illness or injury. We should not beat ourselves up if we decide to take a little bit of time off to rest and recover from an injury, illness, or severe fatigue. In fact, continuing to run through things like this could do more harm than good.

Mental toughness is important, and being able to push back against the doubt and fear inside your head is a necessary skill when it comes to building endurance and training for marathons. But make sure that you also know how to be honest with yourself, listen to your body, and be humble enough to rest and recover as needed. One or two missed runs will not setback our fitness level and is much more favorable to sub-par training, or worse, missing 6 weeks or so due to injury from overtraining. Your body (and sanity) will thank you.

And when it comes to race day…all bets are off. Both your body and mind will give you permission to push through just about anything. 🙂

Happy (and safe) Training!

BethAnn