November, it’s a weird time of the year.

It’s not quite the end of the year but it feels like the end of the year.

After the big races are done in September and October, my brain wants to start planning for 2025.

Where can I go? What races can I do? Where are the qualifiers for this race or that?

But lottery season hasn’t come yet.

The big races, the Western States, the Hard Rock, the UTMB, and more have their lotteries in December each year.

So between your last big race in September or October until December you find yourself floating aimlessly in “no goal” land, where there are a lot of maybe races, maybe goals and not a lot of certainty.

It makes getting out to the door for that 30k run in the rain less appealing.

I find myself out there, shuffling along, and when it gets hard wondering “why the hell am I doing this?” But there is no concrete answer.

Its so damn overused and cliche, but its so much easier to quit when you don’t have a “why” and for me, that “why”, for the hard sessions at least, is usually a race goal.

So when that goal is vague and blurry, a mystical what if that requires more pot luck that hard work, my motivation suffers.

I’ve heard racing be described as the cherry on top of your training, a celebration of your hard work, and that you need to enjoy the “daily grind” in case that dream race doesn’t come true.

I agree with these sentiments, in theory, but that doesn’t help me when I have to run intervals that are going to hurt and be extremely uncomfortable when I could actually enjoy the hour I have to myself shuffling at 6 min/km pace with a lazy Labrador instead.

I call BS on your bloody cherry.

Plus no one likes those damn fake cherries anyway, everyone knows the icing is the only reason to buy a cake!

But I digress.

The short in-between of 4-6 weeks makes it hard to even throw in a mini goal to keep the mind occupied.

So as I sit here on the couch, drinking my third coffee of the morning and watching a re-run of The Rookie instead of lacing up my shoes for a 30k long run, I want to say to all of those who complain about lacking motivation to train that I feel you, I understand you and I sympathise with you, but I’m still going to do that run, because there is a less than 2% chance that in a weeks time I’ll be pulled out of the lottery of my dream race.

And then I’ll really have something to train for.