I’ve tried the whole gym thing, but they’re overcrowded, besides which you have to get there 10 minutes early to get a bike, weights, a decent spot, etc., etc. Do the math…if you are actually (and miraculously) able to carve out an hour into your busy day to exercise, and you then have to spend 10 minutes driving to the gym, 10 minutes setting up your crap at the gym, and then 10 minutes driving back home from the gym, well, your hour of exercise just got cut in half. No thanks!
So I broke up with Gym and decided to give running a try. It seemed to be a logical choice since I could do it at my convenience, not Gym’s. Here’s the rub though: I hate running! Really and truly hate, hate, hate it! But I had to do something; I hated the marshmallow fluff even more.
Surprisingly enough, I actually stuck with it for all of 2010 (a true miracle, let me assure you), and at the end of the year I vowed to keep it up in 2011. We’re about a month in and all is going well. I am currently running twice a week and walking twice a week. (I figure there’s seven days in a week, so if I exercise four of them, then I am exercising more days than I am not…mathematical genius, I know!)
In order to fit in two runs a week, especially with these short winter days, I have to do a weekday run from work. It’s not my favorite run. It’s loud and it’s not one bit pretty; but it’s convenient, and during the week aesthetics takes a back seat to convenience. I can literally walk out my classroom door, walk off campus (and out of sight of anyone), and I’m off and running.
Last Wednesday was my “work” run. It’s about 3:30 and I’ve got my running shoes all laced up, my visor firmly planted on my head, and my music ready to go in my pocket.
Once my warm up walk is done I’m ready for my music so I pull my iPod out of my pocket and turn it on. Only it doesn’t turn on. It’s not charged, which means the only music that I’ll be listening to is the sound of my own two feet pounding the pavement, accompanied by the very loud traffic from the very busy road. Dang it!
Oh well, no use crying over uncharged iPods and all that jazz…the run must go on! I pull my iPhone out of my other pocket to switch my RunKeeper app from walking to running (this is about as technical as I get people, as you are about to see). I “slide to unlock” and what do I see beneath my right thumb? No! It can’t be! A beautiful little iPod icon! O-M-G!
How is it that I could have run, consistently, for over a year, and not know this? I mean, I put some serious miles in last year, people! How many times have I run with no music because my iPod was not charged? I can’t even tell you, that’s how many! All those times that I was forced to listen to nothing but the pound, pound, pounding of my feet. It didn’t have to be that way! How could I not have known this?
I mean, I knew my iPod music was on there…duh! I downloaded it…I’ve used it for ring tones for crying out loud…I totally knew it was there…only I didn’t! So much for mathematical genius…I haven’t even been able to put two and two together to get four. I didn’t realize I could take my headphones and plug them into the HEADPHONE HOLE and listen to my iPod music on my iPhone! I offer no excuses, people, truly I don’t. I totally cop to being a complete and total moron!
But wait a minute, enough beating myself up…I have music! Who cares if I didn’t know it before? I know it now, and, yippee, I have music for my loud, ugly “work” run. And even better, I no longer have to have my iPod in one pocket and my iPhone in the other. I’m feeling lighter already!
I’m reveling in this little discovery when I realize I better hurry up and run already. I’m fighting daylight here! I click that beautiful, little orange iPod icon and then have a teeny tiny moment of panic…I don’t really have time to figure out what songs to pick…I need to get running, and NOW! So I click “shuffle” and hope for the best!
The first song that comes on is Kenny Chesney’s Thank God for Kids. Now what is the relevance of that you ask? Well, I have been having a doozy of a time at work lately, and things are not looking like they’re going to get any better. It’s only January and there’s already talk of bigger class sizes for next year. UGH! So, of the hundreds of songs that could have come on, this is the song that comes on?! It’s my all-time favorite feel-good-about-kids song ever, and the fact that it came on at that exact moment seems to me to be more than a coincidence.
Could it be that I’m not really a moron after all? Could it be that the universe aligned itself just so at that exact time on that exact day so that I would hear that exact song and feel thankful that I get to spend my days with kids? (Actually, it’s not the kids that are getting me down…it’s the system and the powers that be that don’t know a classroom from a bathroom and so we all get pissed on…but that’s beside the point right now.) The point is, I think there may have been larger forces at work here, people! The point is, I think, maybe, I’m not a moron after all...yeah, right.
I just LOVE your thought process! Would love to run with you...only I think you like your alone time as much as I do!
ReplyDeleteYes, just call me The Lone Runner! Ha! Actually, I'm quite slow and I can't talk while I run, but if that sounds like your idea of fun, I'd love to run with you! It kills me how some people can run, like, 9:00 miles and carry on full on conversations! It takes every ounce of energy for me to stay in the mid 10:00's.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.