Happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a great weekend- mine was really fun. Friday night I headed to Maine with some of my college friends as we all had a baby shower to go to on Saturday morning. My dad made us homemade pizza and ribs and triple berry pie… it was so fun hanging out at my parents house with everyone! On Saturday, we all headed back to MA and then RM and I got together with my Aunt and Cousin before heading to a Kentucky Derby party at our friends house in Brookline. I have zero photos to document any of this, but I promise you the food was delicious, the wine was flowing, and the 2 minutes of horse racing went by in the blink of an eye!

But, today’s post isn’t about my weekend- it’s about those workouts that just suck. You know what ones I’m talking about: mentally you’re not into it, physically nothing feels right, you feel slow and just want to quit early. I’ll admit- these sucky workouts don’t happen often for me, but the other Sunday I went for a run that was just terrible. Like utterly awful- everything about it! I managed to squeeze out 2 miles, but only because I forced myself to keep going since I made the effort to get changed and workout.

The reason why I wanted to talk to you about my sucky workout is to show you that we are all real. All of us health and fitness bloggers and fitness instructors and “oh my God I love working out so much!” people have those days where workouts just suck. But, if we don’t talk about it, you would likely have no idea because social media allows you to share just the good or bad moments you want to share, and 9 times out of 10 we all choose to post about positive, happy, good things rather than the negative stuff.  I mean, it’s much more encouraging and motivating to see us posting pictures of smiling faces and success stories, right?!

So today, I’m being real with you: not all of my workouts are as great as I may portray on Instagram. Not all of my workouts come easily to me. I’m not GOOD at every workout I do. And while it’s so easy to let those “bad” days get to me mentally, these days I’m really working on trying to take a look at the situation and rather than beating myself up because of a bad workout, taking a look at things that could be contributing to a bad workout: am I tired? Sore? Rushed? Stressed? The day my run sucked was a day I probably should have just taken a rest day. I had worked out a lot that week and was sore from my kickboxing class the day before, but, since I was going to book club and knew I had time to workout before that, I forced myself to get out there for a run. Mile 1 clocked in at 9:34, which is a minute + slower than my normal miles. Mile 2 clocked in at 8:40, again, still slower than my normal mile pace. And that’s when I decided to call it quits. The run just wasn’t worth it, and while it was frustrating to just not be able to move how I wanted to, I was proud of myself for stopping early and just moving on.

I didn’t dwell. I didn’t beat myself up for the crap workout. I didn’t let a ton of negative thoughts race through my head. I just moved on. I accepted the sucky run and just let it be. <— this mentality here? Not something I’ve always had. Definitely not. But I’m proud of the mental changes I’ve been making towards working out. It’s so much better to just take workouts for what they are rather than letting them run me and my mood. Because you know what? For every sucky run I do, I have probably 5 that are awesome. Last Wednesday I ran before teaching and was in love with every part of the run: weather, location, scenery, people watching, pace, breathing…

In the end, while I do want to share good, happy stories and pictures to motivate you to get out there and be active and push yourself to try new things, I also want to be real with you and let you know my workouts aren’t always sunshine and roses. They aren’t always full of PR’s and good classes. Sometimes they just suck. Sometimes my body just doesn’t want to work the way my mind wants it to work. Sometimes my mind can’t fathom a workout. Sometimes I quit early. And you know what? It’s totally OKAY! And normal! And, as Sarah so eloquently said, just embrace the suck. Soak it in, think about what could be a player in whatever it is that’s sucking and move on. If nothing else, the sucky workouts sure are humbling… and they sure do make the good workouts seem even better!

Questions for you: When’s the last time your workout just sucked? How does it effect you mentally? Do you push yourself to keep going or let yourself stop early?