I have an easy way to stay motivated while out for a jog. In early 1999, I suffered a fall and suffered blunt force trauma lower back injuries, including a fractured sacrum. After months of therapy...and associated agonizing pain, I fractured my sacrum again. Long story short, one of my specialist doctors told me that before I was 50 years old, I would at the minimum, using a cane or in a wheelchair.

About 3-4 years later, I could walk/hike while carrying backpacks weighing around 20-25 lbs on easier trails but for years I could not run across the street if my life depended on it due to the extreme lower back jarring pain from the attempted running.

Skip forward to today, I have some years before I am fifty and have no use for a cane or a wheelchair and lead what I consider a normal life and the only cautions I have to take is how I lift anything of substantial weight...IOW, slowly and carefully. I also have no problems hiking for days on end carrying 40 lbs in the pack if needed.

I was only a few months ago I started slowing training to run again and it was only just one month ago I ran my first 1 mile nonstop. Now when out on my almost daily walk/runs, whenever I feel like I don't have the motivation to run, I think back and remember when that Doctor told me that I would be using a cane or wheelchair and that gives me all the motivation I need to get the legs into running mode.

I am now up to 5 miles running distance and have no plans to stop. In fact, my plan is to prove the Doctor very wrong and run a Marathon in the spring of 2011 then followed by a possible triathlon attempt in summer 2012.