For a special few runners (mainly the good ones), running automatically comes first and foremost . For the rest of is, there's this thing called life which sometimes gets in the way. First one thing happens and then another, and before we know it, it has been a few days or a week since we were last out running. This is nothing to worry about off-season, but it can be enough to disrupt a carefully prepared training schedule if you are in the middle of preparing for an upcoming race.

The first thing to bear in mind is that getting annoyed with yourself doesn't help; if anything, you are just using time which should be better spent on a sincere reexamination of your goals and schedule. This annoyance can also lead to you trying to overcompensate the next time you do pull on your runners , and increasing the risk of injury. Sit down and ask yourself: can I still finish this event in the time I was training for? Set aside half an hour, grab a pen and paper and try to adjust your schedule to attain those goals. Then sincerely ask yourself: is this schedule too much for the body to take? It varies from person to person, but for runners who are just beginning should generally not aim to increase speed or distance by more than 10% from week to week, and they shouldn't do a run which increases both at the same time. The more experienced you get, the more your body 'learns' to cope with long runs, plus you get a better sense of how well your body is able to cope. If you don't have a good feeling about being able to meet your revised schedule, don't be afraid to lower your goal a little bit. As the old saying goes: half the race is about getting to the starting line.

Sometimes training lapses can be as much due to mental factors as external events; very often it is a combination of both. Are you experiencing mental burnout from doing the same thing over and over again every week? Try and add an element of newness and freshness to your training. See if you can insert some races into that schedule - it's impossible to get bored during a race! Vary your weekly schedules between intervals, long runs and tempo runes. Don't run on the same course over and over again - use your running as a chance to explore!

There is another kind of mental obstacle; sometimes after one has missed out on running for one reason or another, it is very easy to listen to the voice of lethargy inside you giving all kinds of reasons not to run. I learnt a nice visualisation exercise from my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy to get rid of such feelings; it is used for getting rid of any kind of negativity, but it can definitely be used in this case. Just take five minutes, and try and see where these negative voices are located. You will find they are coming from the mind, but also in the emotional part of us which is located around the navel area, the home of such emotions as fear and aggression. From both these places, try and pull the negative feelings towards the heart centre, that place in the middle of your chest where you can feel the core of your being. You can do this as you are breathing in; as you are breathing out, imagine a hole at the crown of your head and push all these feelings out through that hole out of your body. I find this exercise very helpful for realising that these negative feelings aren't really me, and shouldn't be allowed to guide my life choices. If you find the cloud has lifted, pencil in a run as soon as you can; that very day if possible. Don't worry if you don't have time to run as long as you are normally accustomed to - for today, it's getting out there and breaking the 'duck' that counts.