Bring a friend

I decided as I got abandoned by my training partner this morning that I needed to suck it up and go do my workout anyway, no whining, no excuses. I did battle with myself for about 30 minutes and slowly felt time slipping away. I was not going to give in! My lazy couch butt was not going to win! I called a friend.
Now this friend is the most un-athletic person I know, but she does like to walk and seeing that she is a full 3 inches taller than me I have to jog to keep up with her cadence when she is walking briskly I knew it would be ok. She actually agreed to come to the track and attempt dryland with me. Her exact words were "i'll try but if I can't do it I am just walking, you can do your thing and we'll see each other when we are done". We warmed up for 10 minutes then broke into the 2 minute x 8 exercise set. I explained that she should only stay at each exercise for as long as she could, that there was no pressure to hit the 2 minute mark (you know the don't overdo it logistics as you will not be able to get off the toilet seat lecture). I give her credit, she made it through 4 exercises in the first set (statics, baby steps, dryskates and wooders) then decided that it was not for her and would continue to just walk. She is not an athlete and has no desire to "strength train". I was fine with that. We continued on our own until I was finished with my workout and she still had 3 laps to go (perfect cool down). As we were walking together she commented on how sweaty I was, she was impressed. She also let on that she has always wanted to run, but gets too tired to fast. Now my coaching brain turns on and I tell her to try skipping part of each lap, work yourself up to the desire to run. I shared that I started to love running when I realized I could cover much more ground in a given time and that was part of what I needed to convince myself I had accomplished something. I let her go on up-ahead so that I could cool down more slowly (remember I have to run to keep up with her, which does not lend itself well to cooling down). As I watched her do her last two laps she was skipping 100M of each one and enjoying it, she finished with a huge smile. The moral of the story? When faced with a lonely dryland workout, BRING A FRIEND!