Hot Chip – Hungry Child

I’ve been trying to be better about exercising but it isn’t something I enjoy doing. After I’ve been to the gym I tell myself, hey, that wasn’t so bad, you should really try to fit in one more gym day during the week. That never happens though so the week goes by and any motivation I had has gone. I had a doctor’s appointment in the summer to follow up on my ultra low vitamin D levels and she congratulated me on losing a pound. “One whole pound!” she asked, “How did you do it?” I lied and said I added one more day at the gym. Really it was probably just that I had on lighter weight clothes and shoes but I didn’t want to own up to my couch-to-5k-but-only-on-Sundays fitness regime. She advised that I just, you know, come home from work and bang out a mile. That’s an idea, I said.

My preferred mode of exercise is bike riding but for a number of reasons, it hasn’t been practical for me for several years. That makes me sad. My last concerted effort to get back in the saddle a few years ago only served to convince me that I needed to get in better shape before I could even think about resuming that as a regular hobby. Of course there are bike machines at the gym and those spinning bikes are all the rage, but I hate that they are stationary. And probably half of my enjoyment on the bike was tied to the feeling of the wind rushing against me and the music in my ears. It was really more like dancing or skating. That last time I tried to ride for exercise my legs felt like lead and the bike was heavy and the shoes were wrong. I decided I would need to be more nimble before I could go out again.

So that’s how I have found myself laboring along on the treadmill at the gym. I don’t like running, never have. But I was successful at the c25k program once before and I hate those elliptical machines even more than the treadmill—they just feel like you are doing some pointless hamster on a wheel thing. With running I can at least see that it’s a useful thing to be able to master. I can’t do it without music though. I mostly forget that I want to make a playlist for this activity until it’s too late to pull it together so I wind up picking a more dance-y kind of album and just skip any slow songs if I’m supposed to be running instead of walking. Some albums, like this one, have some kind of video going the whole time if you are using Spotify on your phone. This one is just some swirly colors and it makes it easy to just tap the phone to skip or repeat a track. If I ever get past Week 6, Day 1 of this running program, I may need to put a bit more effort into the song selection but this is six solid minutes at 120bpm, which is about my limit.