We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled Vegas posts for something that I’m struggling with right now. And I’m sorry, this is not upbeat. I’ve tried to make it more upbeat then it really is, but we’ll see how well that works out.

But first things first. I think I’m dying (nope, not overly dramatic in the least). I haven’t slept since Sunday. Every morning is a huge struggle for me and I haven’t gotten out of bed before 7 all week. Usually later. And if you know me, you know that is not normal. I am an early morning worker-outer. I like it to be done before I go to work so that I can come home and lay on the couch and eat ice cream after work.

And that’s exactly what I look like when I do it too. Apron and all.

However this week I have done every single workout in the afternoon. Monday I was on my last day of vacation, so I slept in til 9:30 and didn’t work out til 2pm. Tuesday I didn’t even contemplate running until I ate dinner and then decided at 8:30pm to get my run on… which was a horrible idea. Wednesday I worked out after work, and it’s really a miracle I even made it to the gym as I was fighting it the whole way. Which brings us to today. Guess who didn’t get out of bed til 7:30 this morning?

Exactly.

So now I’m facing the inner struggle of if I’m going to do my 6 mile tempo run tonight when I get off work or if I’m going to give myself a break and just go home and be consumed with guilt.

Which brings me to the topic of this post.

Exercise guilt.

You know, that feeling, where you know you “need” to work out but you don’t and then you have that overwhelming feeling of “I should be working out right now… I’m such a loser for not… Why did I skip that work out?!”.

This doesn’t happen to me all the time. Sometimes I take an unexpected rest day and it’s glorious. I have zero guilt and I veg and it’s perfection. Sometimes, like today, I miss my morning workout and the thought of working out in the afternoon seriously makes me want to just die a little bit, but the thought of skipping a work out makes me even more sick.

That’s when it starts… the banter back in forth in my head. “You NEED to go get that workout done”… “It will not kill you if you don’t work out today”… “You JUST told Sean the other day that you will never skip a training run”… “6 miles is such a long time to be running”… “You’re running 16 on Saturday and you’re not worried at all about that, that’s 10 miles longer”… “I DON’T WANT TO”… “I HAVE TO”…

And it goes on. And on. And on. And I get overwhelmed. And then depressed. When I think about skipping it, I get really down on myself. And then I remember how tired I am and I start to question all over again…

The truth is, it’s not going to kill me if I miss one training run. It’s not going to kill me if I take one extra rest day. In all likelihood, the run will get done, be it today or tomorrow. And I know this. What I’m afraid of is that if I skip one training run, it’ll make it easier to skip the next training run. And then you have the snowball effect. And I didn’t pay a gazillion dollars to run a marathon and not do well, at least not if I can help it.

So thanks for listening to me rant now. And to give photo credit where it’s due, I get all my pics from Google Images if they aren’t my own and then I picnik them up.

Do you suffer from exercise guilt?

What do you do?!