Ok, so getting out the door is most times the hardest part of running but sometimes I lag in the middle of a run.    In the beginning I would try the grade school trick.  Remember that one?  Telling yourself that can run until that next tree or as far as the green mailbox.   You could take a walking break if you just reached the next block.     Sometimes it worked; sometimes it just made me cranky.     Finding myself cranky in the middle of a run was almost worse than lagging. 

As I can’t exactly use Pinterest while running to look at inspirational images, I needed something else.   A year or so back I stumbled across an article on Runners World by Christie Aschwanden about mantras.    It talked about how a key word or phrase could really get you back in the game.  Ok, so just words?  I could totally do that!  So I set out to make the perfect mantra.  I wanted it to be cool and maybe look good on a shirt.   Easy right?   Yeah, not so much.    I tried numerous possibilities that aren’t even worth remembering.   Some were famous slogans and some were horrible creations of my own.  Nothing stuck.

What finally ended up working sounded a lot like a little Disney fish.  Once I was out for a run and starting to drag, when I just started saying “Just keep running, just keep running”, over and over again.  Not sure where that came from but it worked!  I even made myself a screensaver for my phone.  

Anyone have any mantras of their own that they want to share?