As the 2025 racing season comes to a close and the distant goals of next year feel oh so far away, it’s important to continously check on your moitvation levels and ensure that you’re in a good place for when training starts to get serious again. Here is how you can resolve feelings of low motivation!

SINGLE DAY LOWS

Even for those of us that are obsessed and addicted, we all go through days of low motivation.

Some days we just might not be feeling it.

Now this could be a “check engine light” for REDs, but if it really is just a single day feeling, the first place I’d look is diet.

If you’ve eaten and hydrated well, one of the best little tricks that you can do is to have just a teensy bit of caffeine.

It’s really that simple. Caffeine should get your heart rate and excitement up, it should help your brain to feel sharper and more alert, and in turn, that should encourage action and motivation.

Whether it’s a quick pumpkin cream cold brew (my favourite!) or a caffeinated gel, this can immediately snap you out of your low funk and encourage you to get out the door.

Now, this works great for the days when you’re just not feeling it, and can’t pinpoint why.

But what about the days where you know exactly what it is?

Maybe it’s the stress of work. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe you’re sick and tired!

This is where you need to know your body. Sick or injured? Take the day off or take the load off (intensity, volume, terrain).

Tight? Sore? Stressed? A run or some form of exercise might be exactly what you need.

So get out and make it fun. Explore somewhere new. Listen to your favourite podcast. Run with a friend. Make a new playlist. Wear a new outfit combo. Set yourself a challenge or a goal.

Do anything to make it different from all the other runs. Give yourself that extra reason to be excited.

There’s no shame in taking a day off when your body needs it. But sometimes, it’s not needed.

More often than not, the run goes much better than expected and makes your entire day better.

So I’ll always encourage athletes to get out even when they don’t feel like it.

To give you a final example, today we had what feels like our tenth or twentieth day of rain in a row. I didn’t want to go back outside again after a severe storm yesterday. So I simply just adapted my routine to run in the afternoon instead of the morning. It’s the weekend and I have the time, so why not?

Even just swapping that rainy run for some time on the arc-trainer or Peloton is better than nothing!! Again – make it fun!

MULTI-DAY LOWS

For a multi-day low, I’d start in the exact same place. Chances are you’ve gotten yourself into some sort of REDs (relative energy deficiency). You might think you’re eating and fuelling enough.

But you might just be eating and fueling enough for a normal human. Not one training 6-10 hours a week, constantly depleting their glycogen stores.

If you’re experiencing a multi-day low, I’d start by looking into some of the essential vitamins and minerals. Have you been getting enough…

• Vitamin D?
• Iron?
• Calcium?

Have you been eating enough variety of foods? Have you been fuelling enough during and immediately after exercise?

If your diet has been spot on and you can confidently answer “yes” to questions like these, I would then look to things like sleep and stress.

With too much stress and not enough sleep, you are putting your body at risk of developing aches and pains, if not a full-blown injury. Cutting back on volume and intensity can be completely okay here, before returning to normal highs when you’re feeling higher on life.

Sometimes you don’t need to stop entirely; but simply adapt.

Either way, identifying potential roots to the problem is essential to the puzzle-solving equation. As a coach, I’m always happy to talk athletes through these feelings and understand where I can help and how we can adapt.

But when in doubt, remember that diet can always be a great place to start. Get some caffeine, make it fun, and do whatever you can to make the run different.

Thanks for reading and see you soon!