It’s not always easy to get out the door and go for a run. There are valid reasons for not running (injury, exhaustion, overtraining, et cetera), and there are excuses for not running, which we’ve all made. Here’s a list of 40 very common excuses you’ve probably used at one time or another to put off your run till tomorrow, or next year, or the next lifetime:
- “It’s too hot”
- “It’s too cold”
- “It’s raining”
- “I’m too busy”
- “I just won the Boston Marathon yesterday”
- “I’m tired from the long hours I spent building a replica of the Burj Khalifa out of toothpicks this weekend”
- “I am a single parent of eleven children”
- “I am pinned under the wheel of a dump truck”
- “I prefer LEGOS”
- “Today is my cross-training day”
- “I just ate a full rack of ribs and drank six Budweisers”
- “I just sat down and am about to enjoy this full rack of ribs and six Budweisers”
- “I just ate a full rack of ribs and drank seven Budweisers”
- “Mercury is in retrograde”
- “Mercury is no longer in retrograde”
- “I’ll run tomorrow”
- “I ran yesterday”
- “I haven’t run since 2003”
- “Diarrhea”
- “No one can make me run, including myself”
- “My great uncle ran once, and he’s dead now”
- “Who could think about exercise at a time like this?”
- “My treadmill is at the treadmill cleaners”
- “I’m in solitary confinement in a federal penitentiary for the next month and a half”
- “Absolutely impossible when I have all these tweets to read”
- “I have shin splints”
- “I have fallen to the bottom of a deep pit in the Amazon jungle”
- “I only have one running shoe”
- “I am busy lying on the kitchen floor with my dog”
- “It’s 3 a.m.”
- “Trust me, when you’re as drunk as I am, you have absolutely no business running”
- “But I have this perfectly good bicycle right here”
- “All of my running socks are dirty”
- “I’m in the middle of this great book right now”
- “I’m in the middle of having a demon/multiple demons exorcized from my body right now”
- “I’m in the middle of buying a KFC franchise right now and *gestures at piles of documents* there’s all this paperwork”
- “I’ll run later today”
- “I’ll run later this week”
- “I’ll run later in life”
- “Sorry, I’m a dolphin”
If you enjoyed this list, and you believe you have the potential to enjoy other running-related written works, well, do I have some great news for you: I have a book of running essays called Have Fun Out There Or Not and you can get yourself a copy by clicking the photo below:
—Brendan