Save money by running

I seriously felt like I was going to die. My legs felt like jelly, my lungs felt like they were collapsing, my nose had snot leaking out of it-- this was my demise. It looked so easy, I saw people running down the highway every day. Why was this so much more difficult for me? I used to run every day, why does it seem like it's so much worse now?

While lost in my thoughts, it was too late to see a surprising patch of ice. My foot reached the ice patch and I felt the weight of gravity pulling me to the ground. My butt landed on the street, resulting in a wave of painful emotions radiating through my body. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there on the ground for a full minute, knowing when I got up I would instantly be sore.

When starting to run again, I knew I would face some problems. I was a runner a few years ago, but I stopped having time. Now I have time to run, and someone to run with, so the resurection of my past exercise routines seemed evident.

In the past, I could run miles and feel great after. Yesterday, my run felt like my knees were going to give out and my head was going to explode. Through some experimenting, I have found a few things that ease going for runs.

The first thing I needed to do was find a route that motivated me to keep running. The easiest way to do that was to drive around in the back roads through the Superior Municipal forest. If the route is scenic, the run flys by. If I’m more focused on the scenery, I don’t look at my watch as much. To stay motivated in this way, I usually only stay on one route for a few runs.

After finding different places to run, I have to find my pace. I have a Spotify subscription and a perk to that is the running section in the app. All I have to do is start running, and it will find music I like that matches my pace. When the music matches my pace, I find myself more energetic and motivated to keep running. I also find myself having to switch paces fairly often. I start my run at a normal pace, then slow down, then walk for a minute, then start running again.

The biggest motivation for me is how much money I save by running. Running doesn’t cost me anything, all I need is a path and some running shoes and I can get in shape without a gym membership.