You don’t understand how people find time to exercise

You might be an entrepreneur if…when you see a grown man riding his bike for exercise at 7am when you’re on your way to work you think “How in the world does anyone have time for that?”

Ironically I just started a new exercise regimen and went walking for 50 minutes this morning. But I had to get up at 5am to do it.

I live and work in Draper, Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake City. The part of Draper I live in is on the hillside and there are many streets going up and down and winding all around with great views of mountains and valleys, which makes it a popular place for bikers, joggers, hikers, walkers, etc. Almost every day on my way to work I pass a few people jogging or biking. It’s not uncommon for me to pass 20 or 30 such people. And when I see these people I look at the clock, and if I’m getting to work late and it’s already 9am I think “What do these people do for work? How can they be out biking at 9am on a weekday?”

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of slow when it comes to getting dressed and showering and such. I don’t know where I’m wasting time, but by the time I eat breakfast, shower, and dress over an hour has gone by. That means if I were out biking at 9am and I didn’t get home until 9:10 I wouldn’t be leaving my house until 10:10 at the earliest and therefore wouldn’t get to work until 10:15, and if I worked in downtown Salt Lake I wouldn’t be to work until 10:30 or later.

First of all, I don’t understand where these people work and how they have the flexibility to go into work after 10am. I suppose each person I see represents a unique experience in which that person took the day off and they’ve never done it before and won’t again for a year, but based on the number of people I constantly see biking around I have to suppose these people are doing this on a regular basis. I don’t think these people are retired because most of them look about 40.

Even supposing these people have flexible jobs, who has time to exercise like that? I don’t even have kids, and yet at the end of the day there are always 10 things I need to do that I didn’t have time to get to. For me, the only way to get regular exercise is to sleep less and get up early. Once 8am rolls around I’m already getting too many emails and phone calls to feel like I can go exercise. So who are these people who have all this time to ride bikes around? Perhaps they work from home, are early retirees, or have a parent who wrote a famous song from which they earn royalties, who knows. All I know is that I’d sure like to be them for a few months, or ever a few days. How would it be?