Like Mimi said, it took YEARS to get it!

If you aren't an exerciser, when you start, it exhausts you. It exhausts you to the point where it's a WHOLE lot easier to say the hill with it and just quit! Last spring I started riding, and I thought I'd go out and ride on my own a bit each morning. Well, DH came home from work those days and said, come on, let's go for a ride! And I went.

To go from sloth to two a day rides (yeah, okay, so each was only five miles) was pretty much all I could do in those days. Like, it meant just sit and rest and drag myself to the kitchen for more water and some food now and then. What kept me doing it? I remembered going through it before, and knowing that if I could stick it out, I'd be okay.

And while I was riding, I liked it!

Now is the spring of my second season of biking, I didn't ride all winter, and I sure as heck didn't ride enough last summer, cuz I'm still a physical "wreck" -- out of shape and it's still easier to be a sloth than truly active, but I look forward to riding, I'm annoyed when the weather doesn't cooperate, and I'm starting to not care so much about the weather. Kind of like not waiting for the perfect snow to ski on.

Now, for many years, DH wouldn't walk anywhere just for the walk. There had to be a purpose to it. Like, when we were young, and pregnant, and I wanted a walk, we could only go out together if it was to go somewhere, like the restaurant a couple of blocks away (I think the last walk we took together was to the hospital the night we had our second child, again, just a couple of blocks) I'm pretty sure riding his bike for exercise is a CHORE for him, but he's decided that it's something he needs to do and he'll suffer through it.

I'm past CHORE, because I know the feeling, but it's still sometimes easier to pass it up!

It was pretty cool when it was HIM suggesting today's ride, even though that was only because he beat me to it! (he suggested "my" hill again, and I think he's feeling smug about that he can go up it and I can't yet)

Okay, so that was pretty round about, and maybe it didn't make what I was thinking when I started typing as clear as it could have, and maybe I could just delete all the extraneous, and spit out the point, but getting there is part of the point, in a way:

We who don't exercise, but then start, we have a pretty long row to hoe to get to the point where it's a Good Thing. I think we don't get to the end of the row.

Karen in Boise