As a kid, I hated gym and avoided exercise. As an adult, I recognize I need to get moving if I want to be healthy, so I have been looking for ways to make exercise more fun.

A few weeks ago, one of our stations during the gym class I take was at the punching bag. You hit it with a baseball bat, swinging for a home run, whacking the bag with all your might.

I loved it! I’m not comfortable with violence against living things, but beating the crap out of an inanimate object was fun.

I teased my instructor: “You didn’t tell me you were training us for the zombie apocalypse!” He laughed, and I realized I’d found a whole new way to think about exercise.

Here are some of the things I am now training for:

1. To journey There and Back Again,
2. to become a Jedi,
3. to survive the three dangers of the Fire Swamp,
4. to become a dragonrider of Pern,
5. to win the Triwizard Tournament,
6. to follow the Beavers across Narnia,
7. to outrun the Daleks,
8. to ride with the Rohirrim,
9. and, of course, to kick ass during the Zombie Apocalypse.

I doubt I’ll ever sign up for a marathon, a triathalon, or a long-distance bike race, so there’s no point in training for them. I suppose it’s just as unlikely I’ll ever be face-to-face with a zombie, need to walk across Middle Earth, or run faster than Daleks roll.

But I love the idea of getting ready, just in case.

How about you? Do you have any unusual goals to help motivate you when you work out?