For some reason when I woke up this morning I didn’t stumble into the bathroom and stare at the mirror trying to determine if that was really me. Instead I stumbled into last night’s clothes and my new pair of running shoes and I went running. Now this is odd because when I took the Physical Wellness, the college equivalent of gym class, I was what you would call “borderline sedentary.” That means I sit around a lot and I’m not that active. Now it’s not like I’m the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons or anything–far from it. I’m a pretty bony, skinny kid. But I’ve noticed that my jeans don’t fit like they used to, and I decided it was time to take action before I did resemble the Comic Book Guy. So I woke up this morning and went running. Of course this wasn’t a huge sacrifice. I’m on spring break. I rolled out of bed at 9:30 and went for a short run before I started my day of… not much.
For a person who’s horribly out of shape, I have to say that it felt really good. After taking a shower, I felt like a million bucks–just like my Physical Wellness professor said I would. Of course right about now I feel like $3.89–the cost of a bottle of aspirin. Actually it’s not that bad, I’m just exaggerating for effect. But this morning when I was heaving along with my pokey little jog I felt really good. I kept thinking how good it feels to be alive. I’m not the kind of person who likes to run, but it was invigorating to crawl out of bed and pump my legs and feel the blood flow through the veins. What a concept.
What I find really entertaining is that I actually need to take the time to exercise. I think it’s kind of humorous that our society has come to a point where we need to exercise to stay in decent shape. It used to be that your job involved enough physical labor to keep you in top physical condition. Now we just sit around in air conditioned offices and squeeze our little stress balls to keep our wrists from cramping up. We have to squint our eyes when we venture out into the blinding sun. To keep our bodies from turning to gelatin blobs we have to take our free time to exercise. We’re not even social enough to go play. Why take the time to go and run when you could just play a game and stay in shape? It makes sense to me, but look at how I do it–my roommates play Ultimate Frisbee twice a week and I never join them. Now I’m to the point where I have to exercise, when I could just join them. Right now my only excuse is that I wouldn’t last ten minutes in their game I’m so out of shape.
It just seems kind of ridiculous that we have to spend time exercising instead of having fun. I guess I like to ridicule myself. The one thing I do enjoy is the quiet time to reflect and pray. Running doesn’t exactly require a lot of thought.
You weren’t looking for structure tonight, were you? Cuz it’s spring break, you’re not going to get any. You’re lucky I even took the time to think.