Why do we workout?

I've been feeling burned out--long summer of training for a long race.

I need a change, probably temporary, but a break from the usual running, biking etc. regime.

Looking for the fresh, I tried a new workout this morning. It's called the Nalini method--but elsewhere in NYC (and, I gather, LA and other like locales) a similar workout is variously called Physique 57 or Core Fusion. The workout is billed as a combination of yoga, pilates, barre work (i.e. ballet), strength and resistance training, with, it seems to me, some boot camp thrown in. All this will make me longer and leaner--I wish.

Or do I really? Is that even why I workout?

I am struggling with that question, as I ponder the possibility of parting with the monthly membership fee required to take the classes. I'm not usually a class person (so is it really the change I'm resisting?), except for yoga, but somehow that doesn't feel like a "class" in the same way. The yoga I traditionally take focuses on alignment and calming the mind. For me, yoga is simultaneously energizing and soothing. So is running, and biking, and hiking, and swimming, and cross country skiing and so on.

So is that why I workout? To soothe and calm?

Or is it to be outside, rain, snow or shine? Or maybe to be strong, to test my mental and physical endurance? To forestall aging? So I can eat chocolate cake?

Or maybe it's to do something special, that I think other people can't do?

Then I get knotted up worrying that some of those reasons are vain, or arrogant, or delusional.

Until I remember the reason of reasons--joy. Too much thinking is going on, and not enough feeling. I need to stop wondering "why" and feel the answer. Do my Eckhart Tolle, Power of Now, scan of my physical-emotional being and ask, am I happy? Do I feel pleasure in my very fibers?

I'll give it a feel, while I nurse my sore muscles.