Gunfight

Here is an additional thought about running. Well, not so much about running as about choosing your battles wisely. As I said earlier, the best way for me to form a habit of running daily is to run immediately after work. By immediately I mean changing in our locker room, running from the Wetumpka Post Office to Ft. Toulouse and back, then using the ride to Montgomery on my motorcycle as a cooldown. This works well for several reasons, the main one being that I avoid the hour of wasted time if I come home and change which involves sitting in front of the TV to lace up my running shoes. That, of course, means tuning to Fox or CNN which will grab my attention for 20 minutes. Then maybe it is a good idea to check out the Weather channel and unless it happens to be on the "8's" that is another 15 minutes. You know I am not leaving the house before I check my e-mail and while I do that, may as well have a glass of ice-water.
Some variation of those events always provide reasons to delay hitting the road. At work there is no TV, no soft chair, not much air-conditioning. The catch is co-workers are either a) sincerely concerned about running in the kind of heat we are having now or b) feeling guilty and need to convince me of the folly of chasing fitness so they will not feel bad. I was confronted recently by one that probably is the latter. This lady is the most overweight in our office--and that is saying something. She is also very outspoken, close to being a bully. She approached me a few days ago and said "I saw you running yesterday. What were you running from?" I have heard many variations of this attack on running...."I am not running anywhere unless a bear is chasing me!". Normally, I will allow people to have their fun and play along but on this day when she asked what I was running from, I replied "obesity, diabetes, foot and leg amputation, heart attack, hardening of the arteries" and before I got through the entire list in my mind that concluded with a decade in a nursing home followed by premature death, her face hardened, she gave me a steely stare, turned suddenly, and waddled away. Maybe it was a little too direct but let this be a warning; I have a quick wit and I am not afraid to use it. Ridicule the running at your own risk.