Usually when I write posts like I wrote yesterday, they’re half kicking my own ass and half hoping you might find some motivation in them, too.

But they usually work—I can’t, with a good conscience, write some post about how I don’t have any excuses to not work out and then…not work out.

This is what I look like every single time I work out.

As I was finishing up work last night, I got a call from my friend Emily. “Let’s get dinner!” she said.

“But I have to go to the gym!”

“Oh, come on, let’s get dinner!”

I definitely faltered for a second. I hadn’t worked out since Sunday, what was another day? But then I thought of the gym bag I’d lugged to work and the post I’d written in the morning, and I said “what if I work out and then we get dinner?”

“Fine…text me when you’re done,” she said.

So off to the gym I went. I wanted/needed to run, so I hopped on the treadmill. The idea of running at one speed on the treadmill is about as exciting to me as watching paint dry (I take offense with this statement–if you’re painting a room a pretty new color, paint drying can be pretty damn exciting) so I did a sort of pyramid workout.

This took me about 28 minutes and left me happy and sweaty, which is all I can really ask for from a workout. (And when I texted Emily when I was done, she’d already eaten. Lame.)

I’m going out to NJ tonight for a birthday dinner with my parents, so I knew I had to get a workout in this morning. Since abandoning my strength challenge, I’ve been seriously lacking in the strength department, so I knew I wanted to get some strengthening moves in. I tried Tina’s At-Home WOD while I had Today Show on in the background. I googled “home WODs” because I know Crossfit workouts are short and intense (and most of the home ones just include body weight), and that’s exactly what I wanted this morning.

It’s 10 rounds of 10 reps of three moves, and at the beginning, I thought it was so easy. By about 80 push-ups in, my arms were jelly. Perfect.

Hard and fast, or slow and easy?

Workouts. Minds out of the gutter, please.