Staying Focused Is Hard

Howdy all!
        As I had guessed my return to work full time has cut into my motivation to turn out consistant posts. I'm trying to stay focused in our training but it has proved difficult with my work schedule. I have always been a '9-5' worker but since moving to France work has been spotty with not so much consistancy. It has proved very difficult for me to do my runs after work after the children have drained all my energy and sucked away my life force. I know that I'm not alone in these difficulties, not by a long shot.
          Last Sunday my wife and I were able to put together a 18km run linking together some unexplored trails (unexlpored by us) on a long loop from our doorstep. We approached it with a simple goal of just bringing water and no foods. I want to see how our bodies react after 10km of no added energy and how it feels to push ourselves. We both did fairly well with a good trotting pace and I believe that we'd both agree that tiredness really didn't kick in until around the 13km mark where legs started to get tired. I even got a little hungry. This is a good sign for me considering that I normally would start tightening up around 8-9km into my runs but usually I wouldn't be drinking water. I fully understand now that water is important for all distances of running but even more so for heavy sweaters such as myself.

           After the weekend we were supposed to run Tuesday evening but I had a bout of laziness and couldn't bring myself to go out. I'm really disapointed in myself that I couldn't just get up and go. I know that we, as runners, shouldn't beat ourselves up over these lapses in training but that when we do get back out there we need to hit it hard! Not only this should be kept in mind in training but also that training for a race is important but why are you doing the race? Is it for a challenge? Are just competitive? Or is it just for fun? Whether it is one or all of these reasons, I believe that the 'fun' reason is the most important facter to remember. If you're not having fun then be careful to burn yourself out. Keeping this in mind, tonight I will attack my interval training fun and competitiveness towards myself.