40 Excuses You’ve Probably Used to Procrastinate from Running

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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:

1. “It’s too hot”
2. “It’s too cold”
3. “It’s raining”
4. “I’m too busy”
5. “I just won the Boston Marathon yesterday”
6. “I’m tired from the long hours I spent building a replica of the Burj Khalifa out of toothpicks this weekend”
7. “I am a single parent of eleven children”
8. “I am pinned under the wheel of a dump truck”
9. “I prefer LEGOS”
10. “Today is my cross-training day”
11. “I just ate a full rack of ribs and drank six Budweisers”
12. “I just sat down and am about to enjoy this full rack of ribs and six Budweisers”
13. “I just ate a full rack of ribs and drank seven Budweisers”
14. “Mercury is in retrograde”
15. “Mercury is no longer in retrograde”
16. “I’ll run tomorrow”
17. “I ran yesterday”
18. “I haven’t run since 2003”
19. “Diarrhea”
20. “No one can make me run, including myself”
21. “My great uncle ran once, and he’s dead now”
22. “Who could think about exercise at a time like this?”
23. “My treadmill is at the cleaners”
24. “I’m in solitary confinement in a federal penitentiary for the next month and a half”
25. “Absolutely impossible when I have all these tweets to read”
26. “I have shin splints”
27. “I have fallen to the bottom of a deep pit in the Amazon jungle”
28. “I only have one running shoe”
29. “I am busy lying on the kitchen floor with my dog”
30. “It’s 3 a.m.”
31. “Trust me, when you’re as drunk as I am, you have absolutely no business running”
32. “But I have this perfectly good bicycle right here”
33. “All of my running socks are dirty”
34. “I’m in the middle of this great book right now”
35. “I’m in the middle of having a demon/multiple demons exorcized from my body right now”
36. “I’m in the middle of buying a KFC franchise right now and *gestures at piles of documents* there’s all this paperwork”
37. “I’ll run later today”
38. “I’ll run later this week”
39. “I’ll run later in life”
40. “Sorry, I’m a dolphin”

Brendan Leonard’s new book, Have Fun Out There or Not: The Semi-Rad Running Essays, is available now.