A Campaign for More Exercise

The campaign headquarters for the John Edwards presidential campaign moved in across the street from the coffee shop where I work just a few months ago. On the whole, the members of the campaign seem to be recent political science/law grads who are passionate about John Edwards' platform and probably looking to get more into politics themselves. Many of them regularly come into the coffee shop (sometimes twice a day) to help get them through their 12 hour plus days at the office. Yesterday, a few of the guys invited me to go play football with them because I was getting off work at about the time they were going to play. I decided that, since Melissa had a haircut appointment, I met as well play football instead of sit around at home.

When I got down to the field I did some warm-up stretches because I knew I hadn't exercised those muscles in quite a while, but I had no idea how out of shape those muscles were. The game was great fun, and I even scored a touchdown, but not long after I got home I could already feel my muscles stiffening. Not a good sign. Of course, this morning it got even worse, and I had difficulty driving to and from church because I had a hard time lifting my leg to move it from the accelerator to the brake. Maybe the best way to show me how out of shape some of my muscles are was to pound them to the ground, because I'm really not that old yet. I don't know if the football experience will actually motivate me to exercise more, but the pain was definitely worth the gain (remember those "No Fear" t-shirts). I like to look at the experience as maybe I burned one of our future presidents for that touchdown, and when he or she is in office I can say, "I totally smoked that guy."