I gotta be honest here...

... though I love what it does for my body and how I feel when I'm done with it, I hate running. No. I HATE running.

But, you ask, didn't you do Couch to 5K last winter, running every other day like clockwork until you graduated the program? Yes. And, you ask, aren't you signed up for a 5K right now? Like a month from now? Guilty, again. And I will follow through with that. I will train as best I can, though I will despise every single moment of it. Many people will finish in front of me. Hopefully, a few will finish behind me. And then, I can put this running nonsense behind me for good. Or, until I lose my mind again. I don't know why it took me so long to come to this conclusion. Even when I was running every other day, the only reason was that there was a finite endpoint to it. When I reached that endpoint, the motivation disappeared like a fart in the wind.

The past week, predictably, the weather's been getting nicer. I've been walking the little pup in the park, about 4 miles round trip. At the clip we walk, it's a good enough workout that I can feel the muscles in my legs twitching for several minutes after we've finished; they have that nice taut feeling without the tearing sensation in my achilles or the feeling that someone did a cannonball on my lower back. I've done a fast walk/hill climb workout on my treadmill on the days the weather or my schedule didn't agree with walking outside, and I've been just as sweaty and burned just as many calories as if I'd run the whole time. Except... I enjoyed it. I wasn't watching the clock chanting to myself, "amIdone-amIdone-amIdone-whencanIbedone-jesuschristonacrutch-it'sonlybeen5minutes." (or words to that effect)

When I'm outdoors walking or hiking.. I enjoy it. I assume I will love kayaking even more, once I get the new boat out on the water. My bike is all tuned up and ready for riding to work, or the store, or wherever I feel like riding. I guess the point is, there are so many active things I really love to do, why would I spend all day fretting and dreading and beating myself up until I half-assed eke out something that resembles running... when I HATE it?