The Writers Coin

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This week shall henceforth be known as “Free Week.” Every post this week is going to focus on one thing I’m passionate about that you can do for free. From reading books to listening to music, you’ll find it here.

Getting and staying in shape isn’t easy. Typically, the big road block that keeps most people from getting their exercise in is motivation. It has nothing to do with joining a gym or paying monthly dues—it’s about getting off the couch and working up a sweat on those days where you can find about 30 excuses not to.

And I can’t help you with that. But I can help make it easier by getting a workout without spending any money.

What You’ll Need

• A stopwatch
• Athletic shoes
• The Internet

Here’s What You Do:

Run. It’s free, you get to be outside, and you work up a really good sweat. The problem most people have with running is that they get bored. Enter the stopwatch and Internet.

Check out sites like WalkJogRun—they’ll map out your route for you so you know exactly how much you ran. Then check your stopwatch and see how long it took you (or just estimate it).

What motivates me is to chart my progress and see how long I’ve run and how long it took me. When I trained for my Urbanathlon last year, I charted every run I went on (the site lets you save them) and wrote a little diary entry for each to help me remember how I was feeling and how the run went.

It was fun, it was helpful, and it helped keep me motivated to out and run, even when it was snowing outside.

Not only that, it gave me a lot of time to think about anything and everything, and I came up with some pretty unexpected ideas about writing and personal finance.

You can even add some push ups and abdominal crunches every so often to get a more rounded work out.

Keeping track of your progress is a great way to motivate yourself to go out and run a little bit further, a little bit faster. And all for free!