Clementines & Coffee: They Call Me Grace: Me & Exercise

It's Wednesday and hopefully the halfway mark to a three day weekend for most! I'm using this post to effectively procrastinate writing my section of a group paper for school even further. We all know how much I

~~loath~~

love group projects, especially in classes where conflict is encouraged because "it makes for better papers". Excuse me, ARE YOU HIGH?! Whomever came up with that theory was clearly on crack. Ok, I'm sorry, onto today's actually scheduled post.

Exercise. Yeah. Let me give you a little back story first. I come from a family of relatively athletic children. My sister was really good at gymnastics and soccer, my oldest brother was good at baseball and my other brother played football, soccer and baseball. Then there was me.

I am far from graceful, my clumsiness has been a joke in our family probably from the day I started walking. That being said, I did gymnastics with my sister but I was not awesome at it. I played softball for one season but after falling ill, and missing half the year, I never went back. Then I played soccer. Let's just say that during a game in High School I had a clear shot at the goal. I was about 3/4 of the way down the field, just me and the goalie. My body got ahead of my feet, I tripped over the ball and tumbled a ways, loosing the ball to a defender...... in front of everyone. See what I mean, Grace. OK so I'm no athlete but that's fine. It does not mean I am not capable of hoping on a treadmill, going to a yoga class or even participating in a 5k right?

Enter stage left, the excuses. Like most people with an excuse I think mine are pretty valid:

1) I have asthma. This was a great excuse until I started being treated for it over the last 6 months by my allergist and can now breath free and easy indoors.

2) The drive. I can't bring myself to pay for a gym membership when we have a gym at my work. That cuts out weekend workouts because I'm not going to drive 50 miles to my office on the weekend for gym use.

3) Time. Oh there never is enough time right? But really, I either need to work out before work which means I leave home at 5:00 AM (which I did do religiously for about 3 months), or I stay after work. Staying after wouldn't be a big deal if it were not for traffic. When I leave work at 4:00 I get home between 5:15 and 5:30. If I stay late to work out and leave around 5:15 I wont get home until around 7:00.

This was normal

Here's the thing though, I really want to exercise. I feel a million times better after I do, it puts me in an excellent mood, it's good for me and it is something I actually enjoy. So where is this all coming from?

Last Friday was a relatively stressful day at work. I hadn't had a day like that in quite a while and all I could think about was how much better I would feel if I could just go for a run. Too bad I didn't have anything gym wise with me.

These shoes miss me

All that being said, I think I am going to work towards getting back into the routine again. I've been focused on keeping my immune system healthy which means getting my rest, taking my vitamins, eating healthy and drinking lots of water. I do not want to be the girl who gets every sickness that enters the office like I have been in years past. My allergist has said that moderate exercise helps boost immunity, plus I do actually miss the post work out accomplished feeling so I figure why not?

My first race after this long break is the Neon Run on April 13th. I've done races with my co-workers before and I'm really excited to participate in this event with that group!