Free, Social Exercise

I've never enjoyed running. To be honest, I never liked anything to do with jogging or walking long distances. But lately I've been focusing on getting in shape. I already belong to a gym, but running on the treadmill is so... yawn inducing. I desperately need either socializing or a beat to be motivated to burn some calories.

So last weekend my boyfriend and I went to the Nike RunClub at the nearby mall. It's actually a really awesome program. It's totally free which, granted, makes sense since you just run outside which costs them nothing, but you get more than just the outdoors for your 8:30am Sunday morning run. They have a few people there to lead the groups - I went with the slower group. We ran/jogged 4 miles and probably walked another (she didn't count our walking part of our route which we did on and off in between jogging.) Just having someone there to talk to the entire time made running SO much better. And when we got back to the Nike store, they had fruit and water for us to. All free. Amazing.

Apparently lots of running stores have similar run clubs, at least around here. Some of them are more for advanced runners, but it depends on who shows up for the meeting. In a 30 minute drive from my house there's at least 3 of these clubs throughout the week. If I ever get more in shape, maybe I'll go running with the other groups. For now I'll stick to the Nike RunClub. They even log your miles and give you a free t-shirt when you reach 100 miles total.