Eventually, gingerly, we push on.

The trick to having kids is understanding how to best exploit them.

Take, for example, my recent push to get healthy. In theory, a working mom with a dog and a house and a passel of demanding dependents has no business taking time for herself and her heart. There are only so many hours in the day, after all, and the laundry ain’t doing itself.

But the secret to success, we all know, lies in multitasking, and children and exercise are both likely candidates for such an approach.

What’s more, warmer climes lend themselves beautifully to this kind of thing.

And so it has been that my quartet of monkeys and I have passed the last several evenings in active motion—me on feet and them on wheels. It’s been a transformative experience, this, and the path from reluctance to enthusiasm has proven riddled with fallen logs and attitude. It’s also long enough that I can’t confidently say I can even see its conclusion from where I am. But I’m hopeful.

“I’m going for a run!” I’ll holler to the reclining masses, jerking them alert from yet another somnolent adventure with Zack and Cody. “Who’s coming with me?” (The question is a courtesy more than anything, and they’re coming to get that.)

“I am!” my wonderful six-year-old will cry out with genuine zeal, and then race to find her scooter. The rest are less animated. Some have even been known to groan at this point. Either way, I’m serious, and they know it.

Several exhaustively retrieved articles of footwear later, we’re off, monopolizing the sidewalk, hollering above pounding hearts about pussycat sightings in front-room windows, occasionally blasting each other for transgressions in speed (either too slow or too fast). Invariably, someone will get grouchy at some point and draw the procession to a halt.

“I’m too tired,” they’ll grumble, and I’ll feel a surge of regret swell in response.

“We’re not far enough yet,” I’ll say, evenly, dreading the way a truncated run makes me feel like a failure.

Sometimes it’s at this juncture that I have to sweeten the pot with a promise of a dollar-store visit at the excursion’s conclusion, just to augment the collection of cheap plastic crap we keep at the house. But I keep this little carrot deep in the soil until it absolutely needs to be yanked out.

Eventually, gingerly, we push on.

The group route is definitely an abbreviated version of my usual solo-run itinerary. And it includes the concession of going without musical accompaniment so I can hear the various noises my wheeled issue produce. But I don’t mind the compromises for the advantages they bring in exchange. For one, my kids are exercising! And more muscles than just those in their game-console-primed thumbs! For another, I’m demonstrating for them the value of scheduling physical activity into their day.

What’s more, it’s kind of nice to have company on what is usually such a solitary pursuit. How wonderful to be able to share this thing about which I’m so passionate with those people with whom I’m so passionate.

And I can’t tell you how spectacular it is, as a person with a particular abundance of obligations, to discover that it’s actually possible, on a warm spring evening under the canopy of emerging oak leaves, to combine some of them.