A few weeks ago, I was having lunch with a friend at work. He’s pretty disciplined about what he eats, I’d noticed, always bringing fresh fruit, salads and other healthy choices for lunch.
Our conversation drifted toward strength training, which he does regularly and… I wish I did. I know I need to — I’ve known it for years! — but I find it so difficult to find the motivation to do it, let alone set aside time for it.
(Maybe that’s why I found myself bringing it up, as I’m fully aware I need to, and yet for some reason keep finding excuses not to… then again, maybe that’s a subject for another day!)
He asked me what I wanted to get out of working out, a question that reminded me of the first time I ever worked out with a personal trainer, which now is more than a decade ago. The first time I visited a gym, the trainer I met with asked me, “what are your goals?”
Goals? So, people have goals when they work out?
“Yeah,” he replied. “Where do you want to get to? What do you want to look like?”
To be honest, I’d never thought that way at all. All I’d had was a general sense it would be a good thing if I was stronger, if I was in better shape. Never gave it a single thought beyond that.
“Well…” I replied, hesitantly. “Actually, I’m not sure.”
That’s okay, the trainer assured me. I was far from the first person who’d walked in there without a clue. We’d start with some basic workouts, and move around to different parts of the body over the course of a few sessions. Piece of cake, right?
Turns out… it wasn’t! But that’s another story for another time too 🤣
Now, all that came back to me the other day when I was sitting and having lunch with my friend. Because when I thought about working out with weights, all I could think of was how difficult it was, how arduous I remember it being.
I must have been sharing that, because the next thing he said made me do a double-take: “Do you really want to get bigger? You don’t have to, you know.”
Even though I knew I didn’t want — or even think it possible — for me to become some musclebound bodybuilder, for some reason I equated lifting weights with that. Meaning, why would you lift weights if you didn’t want that?
No, he told me, you can just work out a little bit — incorporate a few small things into your routine, just two or three times a week. There’s no need to make a huge production of it; just make it a natural part of your life.
“Just add some stretching, a couple planks, some squats,” he told me. “You don’t have to be like these people on Instagram.”
That’s stuck in my mind so much these past few weeks, because with my new job — and the five-day-a-week commute — I haven’t been running like I used to. Really, the only time I’m able to get a run in lately seems to be on Saturdays, when I have a couple-hour window to just go and be by myself.
But because my running doesn’t look like it used to — my mileage stats on Strava are pretty low these days! — I’ve started to tell myself I’m not a “real” runner anymore. (And I write this newsletter!)
What I’m trying to remember is, what I can do right now may not look like it did a year ago. Someday I’ll be back to running the kinds of miles I used to run, but right now isn’t that time. That’s okay; for the moment, I’m needed elsewhere.
You’d think that by the age I am now, 55, I’d long have become accustomed to the seasonality of life. But I still have to learn, I still have to adjust. I still have to figure out how to be patient, and let what needs to happen, what needs to be right now, be.
Someday I’ll be in a different place and be able to devote more time to it. But now, I’ll need to take what I can get and do less — and hopefully, someday it’ll be more again.
Does this make sense? Does it sound off the wall? I hope not — I’m also really curious if you go through phases like this in your own life, whether you go through seasons.
How does it work for you?
As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.
Your friend,
— Terrell
Once again, you write a posting about running, and it really is about life. I am at a point right now where I needed to hear what you had to say about exercise. Thank you.
This resonates for me! I was getting back into running after healing from some injuries when, in March 2025, I got into the NYC marathon by the lottery. I hadn't planned on doing anything close to the marathon again until I slowly built up to it over a couple of years. But I got in, so I just HAD to run it! So I trained during the year, had some setbacks in my training, and barely finished it after 7+ hours. A month or two later, I started to run a couple of times, and I would up in pain. I don't have the money for PT, so I just stopped for a while. And I felt some depression about that.
Then I came up with a plan. I'd start with strength training and get some of my resilience back before starting to run again. I'd start with just body-weight at first, 10-15 minutes a day, just to build the routine, and then I'll slowly add on. But even starting that has been on and off. And this gut isn't getting any smaller. I'm struggling.
So thanks, Terrell, for posting about your struggle. It helps.