And I raaaaaannnnn I ran so far awayyyyyyy

Beunos noches,

Friends, family, ditcated readers.  I often times talk to people about extra exercise aside from what is done in the gym.  Time spent in the gym is typically a small part of ones day, that is if it is an everyday occurance.  Generally people feel happy to get into the gym for exercise 3x per week.  That leaves a lot of extra time in the week to eat, and not work out.  You may have a nice healthy active lifestyle, and go hiking a lot, or kayaking every weekend in the summer, and skiing every weekend in the winter.  Well if so, thats awesome kep it up.  However you can always add a little extra to your regimin cant you? Ya you probably can.  A great way to start your weekend when you have the time is a nice saturday morning run.  I don't mean you have to get up and start running at 6am, I mean we all wake up too early as it is, you can sleep in a little.  But when you do get up, if you strap on your trusty Asics, and go pound the pavement for a little bit, I can all but gaurantee you, that you will feel pretty good about it.  I can also tell you that you will probably be at least slightly more healthy throughout the rest of the weekend. 

Picture this for example you get up on a Saturday and go knock out some running, any amount is good, lets say for the sake of our example that you crank out 3 lovely miles.  Well then you get home, you feel good, energized, you probably take a shower (I hope you are going to shower) and then eat.  However while your feeling great and productive, I highly doubt that your going to sit down to a stack of pancakes for breakfast, and ruin everything you just worked for.  These healthy feelings may indeed spill right over into lunch and you might have a salad or a small sandwhich instead of going out for nachos and burgers like you do most weekends(hopefully not really MOST weekends).  In the eveneing reallity might set in and you go out to din, and have a few drinks but hey at least the first part of your day was nice and clean and healthy right?  A better Saturday than you were expecting and right there you see the value in this activitiy. 

So there is really no excuse.  People ask me ALL THE TIME about what they can do while they're away on a business trip, or visitng family and they wont have much equipment "Pat what are some good hotel exercises I can do until I'm back?".......... All you need is sneakers and shorts my friends, I'm sure you can sneak these items past airline security, but dont try to bring a full bottle of mouthwash, or a swiss army knife, they will take that  stuff away quick and give you the old "you can either check this bag, or throw the item away" Then next thing you know you need a new swiss army knife.  Back to the topic you can also change things up if running gets boring for you.  So maybe you dont have an hour to go out and run 6-7 miles but you still want a really good workout that kicks your ass.  Well you are in luck, all you do is go out, get nice and warm with a terrific dynamic warm up, and do 1 of 2 things either

1. Find a steep hill and run up and down that sucker a bunch of times (trust me this will NOT last for an hour)

2. Just run SPRINTS! I mean real sprints, as fast as you can.  As though you are running for your life.

If you choose one of the above activities, you will be dead in a matter of a few minutes, the harder you push the faster you will die, you will be hunched over breathing heavy and sweating like a maniac.  It will be over quickly and again you will feel good about it and hopefully make a few more good decisions for the rest of the day/weekend/trip/vacation.  This is obviously not limited to weekends.  If you feel you need a little bit extra one day, go out, warm up and run 1 mile as fast as you can.  The mile will be over in a pretty short amount of time, you'll feel better for doing it and you can get on with yoru day, or evening, or whatever.

That's all for now peeps, until next time embrace the burn and thanks for reading.