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June 1, I started jogging.

I have been thinking about exercising for awhile — quitting smoking combined with getting a job that’s an hour drive away has taken its toll on my body.

And while things haven’t gotten too out of hand (yet!), I knew I had to nip the weight gain in the bud. (Truth be told it was the change of season that really got me down — nothing sucks quite as much as trying to put on the summer clothes you’ve had for years only to find they don’t fit. Sigh.)

The thing was, I wasn’t sure how to motivate myself to actually exercise. There’s a gym in the new building I live in, but that still was not enough to make me go.

I Googled around to see how to start running, but a lot of the advice seemed impossible to be able to do on the road. How would I know when it had been 60 seconds to stop running?

Then I heard about the Couch to 5 K program — even better, I heard about the program and the podcasts to go with it.

This could work, I thought to myself.

The podcasts (there’s tons of them out there, but I’m using Robert Ullrey’s which you can find here) tell you when to start running and when to start walking. Ullrey’s has music put behind his instructions, but you can find podcasts without the music so you can add your own. It’s a nine week program.

And I just finished week 1.

Well, sort of finished. Week 1 has you running 60 seconds 10 times. I made it through seven of those before I couldn’t run anymore, so I’m repeating the first week. But the important thing is I ran all three days I needed to run to complete Week 1 — which is miles from what normally happens when I decide to exercise.

The second day (Thursday) was the hardest. I just did not want to get out of bed that extra 30 minutes early. And the old me would have made up an excuse (“I’ll do it tomorrow”) and make myself believe that excuse. But then I never would “do it tomorrow.”

This time, I made an excuse for the excuse: “It’s only 30 minutes of a 24 hour day. You can do 30 minutes. You can sleep in tomorrow.” And I did it.

I bought my exercise clothes on Friday because running in heavy yoga pants in the heat wave of last week was not helping. And I can’t wait until Tuesday when I get to run again. Above, is my route — almost 5k in and of itself!

Anyone out there have any advice for staying motivated? I know a lot of runners, why do you run? What keeps you going?