Running from or running towards...

Last week I resumed an old relationship with - my running machine. We have, I think I would describe it as, a long distance relationship and that's nothing to do with running distances, but the fact that we just don't connect with each other that often. It's been on and off, on and off and for a long time off, but we had an unexpected meeting last week and it was ok. We decided we might meet up again.

Exercise seems to be something I like the idea of, yet in the grand scheme of my to do list each week, it's the item that stubbornly remains - carried forward to next weeks' list - staring at me long and hard and accusingly. If it were a Tamagotchi - it would have crawled into a corner and died long ago.

Yet last week, we connected three times. The first time, I thought I might actually have to have the break up talk - you know the conversation - it's me, not you which actually was the truth as five hours after my initial interval training - which for me actually means walk for three minutes, gently jog for two, walk a little more, jog a little, walk a little, jog a little, collapse in a heap a lot - my muscles seized up, my back ached probably due to the fact that I have zero core strength and walking up stairs in heels became a major feat.

My intention was to run every two days, but at the beginning of day two, I knew it was going to be impossible. But funnily enough at day three I was ready to go again. We can do this I thought. It's not over between us after all - that was just a minor blip in our relationship. And so we had another date. It was quite short as I had to head off to work afterwards. I like for us to meet first thing. I'm more inclined to make the relationship work at that time of the day. I'm at my best then - ready to engage and interact and be a willing participant. If we were forced to meet in an evening, I'd find it more challenging. Once I'm home, preparing supper and there's the though of a hot bath, a good book, and my PJ's, I'd definitely blow off my date. I also find that leaving my outfit on the bed in readiness for the morning helps. There's no deciding what I'm going to wear, what shoes? It's all ready to slip straight into and get going. It seems there are lots of tactics involved in this relationship.

And then there was day three. It seems that our relationship might actually be going somewhere. We've rekindled our affair. We've discovered that although it's still early days, we actually quite like each other. We actually rather like how we feel when we've spent time together.

We're not rushing things though...