Exercise on the cheap

I ran outside this weekend, voluntarily. I was neither running to the bus or running away from slavering hordes of zombies. (Why are the zombies slavering? Do their salivary glands still work?) I ran just for health reasons.

Let's edit that: Health and financial reasons. Back in San Angelo, I used to go to the gym in our apartment complex. It was cheap, convenient, and almost always included at least one working piece of equipment.

Here in Austin, I have not yet made the plunge and bought a new gym membership. There are some cheap-to-reasonable ways to get a gym membership here. (For one thing, the Rosewood Park near-ish to the DevHouse has a really... uh authentic exercise room. And it's only $15 a month, which is pretty cheap.) But there's nothing that's both cheap and convenient. In San Angelo, I would go to the gym almost every day because the gym was less than a five-minute walk from my apartment. Put another obstacle in front of going to the gym and chances of going drop precipitously.

But what if the gym weren't just near the house, but right outside? What if the whole world was your gym? Ugh, that's too much, let's shrink it down: what if you just ran around inside the cemetery very close to the house? That way you get to avoid the annoyance of other people driving/walking and you get the fun of looking at some old graves.

Of course, that said, I feel like I might need to get better sneakers if I'm going to start running with any frequency.