Back to the drawing board

So on Sunday I posted about the challenges we're facing with our running program and that we tried out a nearby community center's indoor track. Well, we decided today to get up and try going in the morning to the center just to see how it went.

The pros - it was super quiet this time and not that many people were there.

The cons - they do not open until 6:00. We wanted to leave the center by 6:20 so we could be home and showering by 6:30. They do have showers there, but they are not nice enough for getting ready for a workday. So, that left us pretty much with twenty minutes to work out and honestly, it was only enough to get a mile in of walking around the track and that's pretty much it.

So, we think the community center is out for now. We might try it a couple of times in the evening if it works out but we do so much better if we get up and try and exercise first thing in the morning. It's too easy to put it off in the evenings we've found.

We know that some of the health clubs around us do open earlier or are open 24/7 even - but at the moment, we are wanting to save money for other things so the whole "membership" thing anywhere is just not appealing to us. Our own city's local community workout center is cheap, but is not open convenient hours either and only has about five machines from what I have read. SO we are back to the drawing board.

We have talked and feel that we can stay active through the winter - even if we shelve the running for now - by trying some other programs. I don't know if any of you remember, when we first starting running last spring, we were simultaneously trying to do a situp and pushup program too. But we got to a point where all of that was too much so we kept up the running and that was it.

So, we're thinking right now our best option for the winter is to restart the situps and pushups and walk outside when the weather is decent. I have no problem using our elliptical machine as well, Nate finds it doesn't work great for him. We may also look into some exercise DVDs we can do together as long as we can find one that isn't strictly geared towards women (that was Nate's one request). And hey, maybe Santa will bring us a Wii Fit or Wii Active too. Ha ha.

The goal is to just try to stay active and in some sort of good shape. I don't doubt that when the ground begins to thaw into the spring we can pick up the running program again and just possibly finish it! I'm still extremely proud of how far we did go and it has proved to me that I can be a runner. As of this moment I have no regrets.