Running
October 22nd, 2006 RachelI ran past my gym tonight.
It’s funny — you live someplace for a while, you start running and you get comfortable. It becomes a habit, a no-brainer, just part of life. Your town/city feels smaller and more familiar once you’ve ran around it. Then you move. Maybe even only five minutes away.
That’s what happened the first time; I literally moved a five minute drive/15-20 minute walk from my old house. It felt weird, the streets were different (even if they were adjacent to streets I’d ran on for the two previous years), and my schedule had shifted. These were some of the larger reasons why I went running a total of five times in the year and a half I lived there. There were also about twenty thousand other excuses that came up along the way…but they varied from day to day.
Then I moved down here and for as many people as I see pounding away on treadmills, I’m shocked at the small proportion of runners I’ve seen toodling around town. So, for the last seven months I’ve done what most Old Townies seem to do — I walk Colorado, sit in cute little restaurants, and visit the many many stores. A long walk would be going to a movie, a short walk just downstairs to let the puppy out.
I joined a yoga studio — got bored, stopped going. I’ve got a gym membership that I never seem to have time for. And a micro gym facility two floors downstairs from where I type.
Wait, didn’t this used to be simpler?
Running is easy. Okay, not easy easy…but easy to get prepared for (shoes? check. pants? got ‘em. hair elastic? you betcha.) and flexible in terms of when and where (Yoga Studio = “Oh darn…class is going to start in five minutes, I’ll never make it…soooooo, another episode of Arrested Development? Alrighty then.” Gym = “It’s too early/late”).
The first run is always the most awkward. Where do you go and for how long? How do you gauge time out vs. time back (especially when you’re as anti-watch as me…)? Are there gonna be hills? Fortunately (for now at least) there was narry a hill in sight. And the where/time actually worked out pretty well, especially considering I walked the last couple blocks.
I still want to use that gym membership more. Maybe lunches a few days of the week? Weekends are just so painfully crowded. But it’s also nice to know that in a pinch, or when the mood strikes, I have some place to run. It’ll take a few weeks of forcing it, I’m sure…but lets hope this time it becomes a habit again. Fingers crossed…
