Hey it's my first blog here...
Yeah, I went jogging yesterday at the city's sports complex in my town. Wow, what a nice cushy track. It's new, olympic sized and built over a reservoir with an artificial turf football field in the middle of it.
I got a jogging jersey for Christmas this year from my mother-in-law and decided to take the hint. I bought me some nice running pants to go with it, laced up my sneaks and headed out to the track for the first time.
Maybe it's because everyone was vacationing this Christmas, but it sure was deserted there. I went in the evening and it was pitch dark but I like being out in the elements when I jog so I didn't mind.
I tried jogging on the mills at the gym for a few sessions but just couldn't get into it. It seemed too mechanical, sterile even for me a programmer. But that's just me. I flourish when I do something that doesn't remind me that it's work to do it.
When the elements are breezing by me the goal is not to get fit, it's to get around the track four times. Now that's something my motivated mind can latch onto. I think it'll help me if I sign up for a half marathon at the end of next year too. Then my goal will be to make it through the marathon in one piece. 13 miles flat running. I'm just jogging for now, hoping to get my legs together to the point they'll last one mile let alone 13. But outside jogging seems to be the best excercise for me so far.
On the other hand, half an hour for me on a tread mill going nowhere with the digital display of the lights going around the bird's-eye-view-track is scarcely entertaining, let alone motivating. No matter how hard I try I always end up watching the lights move forward through the disconnected relationship.
There were TVs around me too. I've tried to watch them through my mile run but I can't help thinking, while I do so, that if I'm doing something that I think I need to be distracted from it's probably not worth doing. That really helps boost the old motivation.
When it's all said and done, I'd rather be the lights going around that track. In my imagination, I'm supplying all the work, the lights are having all the fun. And I can always watch TV anytime on my couch.
So I made it around the quarter mile track - if that's what it's rated as; being olympic sized and all - four times, twice jogging, once gasping and once more relaxing. Don't know if I'll try again today. I'll let you know later.
-Joe
