I’m a pretty goal oriented person. I like to work toward something and enjoy seeing the progress and results along the way. However, as of late, it seems like I don’t really have a strong fitness based goal in my sights. I’ve completed my marathon, I’ve lost all the weight I need to lose, and the official Ultimate Frisbee season is still a few months off.
With this lack of goal-oriented motivation, my workouts have been suffering. My 5 to 6 runs a week have been shortened to 3 and even then, I’m only running for the fun of it since I don’t have a target distance or time to shoot for. Of course, I could give myself some arbitrary time to beat with each run, but with no accountability of a race in sight, it just seems sort of meaningless.
I’m still in love with exercising, mainly running and Ultimate, but with recreational activities being my only workout I’m afraid that I’m bound to lose the level of fitness I was at when I was in serious training.
It seems pretty clear to me that I need a new set of goals before I slump back into a sedentary lifestyle. Do you think this is a common problem? What have you used for motivation when you have no immediate goals on the horizon? Is exercising “for the fun of it” enough to maintain one’s fitness?
