I always forget how much better I feel when I’m working out. I used to work from home a lot of the time, so I had a gym routine down, week in week out. For several years. But then that changed a few years back, and ever since, it’s been hard to hit a workout routine I can manage long term.

It’s been way too fucking long. Last year, I got a good routine going early in the year; working with a trainer to get started, and then a two or three times a week routine of mostly free weights and just enough cardio to keep me in shape (I fucking hate cardio, but I can lift weights all day once I hit stride).

I managed to blow that out last fall. Right up to my Fiji trip, I was going, hell or high water, nothing stopping me. But when I got back, I just seemed to never find time. I was busy – morning meetings, too much work, and the gym seemed to fall off my priority list. I managed to find ways to keep active, some walking, general stuff like sit ups and push ups that I could do around the house. So I was keeping in shape, if not getting better.

Then somehow, after christmas, sometime late last winter, a lot of my life sort of hit a wall and I quit taking care of myself.

I’ve felt like shit for most of the last six months. And finally got to the point where I needed to do something about it.

When I walk into my local gym after a hiatus, I always have this moment of oh yeah, why haven’t I been back? It feels like home. The same geezers are still there every day, some of the same trainers who’ve worked there for years. The machines are all where they belong. And I wonder why I don’t get back more easily?

I’m a creature of habit. I make my coffee the same way every morning. I go on down a well worn path, same things every friday, same thing every sunday, whatever, until I hit an obstacle, and only then do I change. Yet I quickly wear a new path to the water hole. My gym routine, once broken, is suddenly so much harder than not going.

Today, finally, I got up without thinking, pulled my dusty gym shoes out of the closet, and went to work out.

God, I love that feeling. My thighs are rubbery from leg-press. My biceps are burning. I’ll be sore tomorrow, because as always, I started to hard and worked ’til it hurt, because I don’t mind that it hurts. I like that it hurts. It’s good hurt.

Gym hurt is like sex hurt. Like bites and scratches. Like sore from hours of hard fucking. Tired, and broken, and wanting more, and having to stop because the body fails.

There are two roadblocks. The first is going. The second is, building a routine. The first one’s easy if I can only remember; it’s that second one that gets me two times out of three.

If I can just get in there tomorrow – start a new friday routine. If I just keep equating gym hurt with sex hurt…