This morning I wanted absolutely no part of getting out of bed and going to the gym. There are days when I go to sleep already knowing what sort of workout I'll do the next morning, already feeling the excitement and the movement. And there are days like today. Even with my weekly dose of BL motivation last night and having read my favorite blog this morning, I didn't have the fire to go to the gym, let alone think about what I'd do when I'd get there. I didn't want to spin. I didn't want to use the cross trainer or the elliptical or the treadmill. What I wanted to do was somewhere between a home exercise DVD (either doing or watching) and walking outside (but not in the dark morning by myself).
And yet I went to the Y.
How did I do it? I searched for motivation (motivation doesn't always leap in our paths and say "here I am!" – sometimes it plays hide & seek) and found it in the form of a bit of adhesive on the back of some foil. At the Euclid Y right now, there's a program called Y-Stars. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but what I do know is this: Each time I go to the Y between now and sometime, I get to put a star sticker next to my name on a chart (woohoo!). At some point in time when I've accumulated some number of star stickers, I'll get a t-shirt. And as my loved ones know, I'll do almost anything for a t-shirt: donate blood, walk for cancer, swim for diabetes – whatever.
At the Y I still had no interest in any machine, so I let myself do shorter amounts of time on several of them. I burned more calories than I would have at home with a DVD, I got a little shot in the arm from some of my morning friends, and I earned a sense of accomplishment. This morning I'm grateful for foil stars which got me to where I wanted and needed to be, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to enjoy an outdoor walk a little later.
~Karin
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