Clever commute? Why I swapped the car for my trainers

I’ve spoken before about my budget workout – a chin up bar, a kettle bell, and 40 minutes to myself at home, vs. an expensive membership of a gym full of parading muscular types in weird lycra outfits. It’s no contest. 

As many people juggling family and work commitments are aware, time is precious, and your time and your money are inextricably linked. Quite often, when you find a way of saving time, it’s going to save you money as well.

For example, I have a car share arrangement with my mum. She doesn’t really use it all that much nowadays, and it’s not a good idea to leave a car unused for long periods of time – the machine benefits from use at least once a week. So I use my mum’s car for a couple of days of the week, which means my girlfriend can use our family car for getting to work on time and doing the school run, which wouldn’t be possible if she was using public transport.

Most people have a car journey somewhere in their week that they could replace with a run.

This arrangement, whilst convenient in many ways, had the downside of requiring a chunk of family time to be wasted, ferrying me to pick the car up, and picking me up when I’d dropped the car off. ‘Boring!’ scream the kids. 

After listening to my sister extol the virtues of cross training (using different kinds of exercise to achieve a greater all round fitness), I came to the conclusion that I could kill two birds with one stone.

I now drop the car off, and run back. When I need the car, I run for it. My parents live about two and a half miles away, so it takes roughly as long to run it as it does to convince the kids to put their shoes on, get in the car and drive over. I’ve only just started doing this, but I’m really enjoying it, and I’ve already started planning longer routes to and from their house, for when my running stamina improves. 

In terms of fuel, it’s not a massive saver, but it all adds up, doesn’t it? Probably about a fiver a month – still, if I can add five pounds to my bank account, and knock it off my waistline, that’s got to be a good thing!