Friend with Benefits

Last night my workout was a good one.  Slow and steady and wonderful and painful all at the same time, but great when I realized I'd finished and that was one more run in the books.  So you ask (or maybe you don't, but you're about to find out anyway) why was it so great if I'm still so far below my goal… because I am making progress. 

I have two amazing friends that live in the area and are my exercise buddies.  One is my marathon training partner and the other is the one I can call up for little healthy activities: a jog, bike ride, dog walk, etc.  Well one of the hardest parts about starting over is that I have been running so slowly and such short distances I felt bad making them go for dinky little runs with me.  However, I am now up to 4, very slow, miles and so it was time to call in some support.  We scheduled a trail run ending at a delicious soup place we all had Groupons (Aren't those like the most amazing invention ever?) for.  Oh, and by the way my computer keeps trying to change Groupon to groping, does my spell check have a fondling fetish I don't know about?

It was hard to motivate myself to go.  I really just wanted to take a nap.  However, I knew someone was counting on me to be there.  That's reason number 1 exercise buddies are the best- It's easier to ditch yourself, you're a jerk if you ditch a friend.  Keeps you motivated and your scheduled workouts on schedule.  I highly suggest trying to find anyone who might be interested in getting active with you.  It makes you so much more likely to make it out the door which can many times be the hardest part of a workout.

My other reason I love my workout buddies - talk time!  Yes, music is great and I do run with it quite frequently.  However, I noticed I was getting so used to running with music that it didn't really give me that extra push anymore.  So I started running with friends.  I found that talking to them makes the time fly.  I can spend way longer than one should planning a viewing party for the season premiere of True Blood and next thing you know the run is over.  FYI - I am making fresh sangria because it is kind of blood colored right, T thinks we need some type of red meat to be all vampy themed, and C was way more excited than a grown woman should be about scary teeth she has (love those girls & Alcide, but he wasn't on the run, STUD!).

I am very lucky to have such wonderful workout supports.  Now I just hope I can force them to run with me ALL THE TIME so that I have no excuse to slack off.  I am blessed to have such great exercise buddies, but they might regret the day they ever started running with me when I have them on speed dial (I do FYI) and start calling them 6 days a week.  Okay I probably won't be that bad because I think that qualifies as stalking, but a support system is fabulous.  If you can't find friends to workout with try to find some way to connect with people, for instance an online blog;)