10K Training, Day One

This morning was my first structured training workout toward my new goal of running a 10K (6.2 miles). Since I wasn't starting directly from the sofa, I picked Week Seven, Day One of the Couch to 10K iPod app's regimen. Five-minute warm-up walk, then alternate four minutes of running with two minutes of walking for fifty-eight minutes, then five minutes' cool-down.

Note to self, eat bigger breakfast…

but not whatever this is.

I'm not used to running for more than a half-hour at a time, so there were some predictably rude awakenings around the halfway point. The artificial energy from my coffee buzz dissipated. My legs went from feeling like capable springs to sacks of meat by the forty-five-minute mark, and my blood sugar crashed right around that same time. I'm going to have to eat a bigger breakfast on training days. Note to self: buy bananas. I didn't get too thirsty since it was cool and damp outside, and the walking intervals gave me adequate opportunities to recupe from all the panting. And to slow my breathing enough to take those inhalations that "hit bottom," as I think of it. But in a few weeks' time I'll probably need one of those runners' hip-holster things with a water bottle slot. And maybe a banana slot.

I started this morning in a funk, one of those randomly lousy Monday moods we all get. I'm still feeling predictably naked, post release-week, and my usual healthy layer of author-armor was nowhere in sight. But after an hour-plus of sweating, my body's so chock-full of serotonin and endorphins and accomplishment, I don't care who says what about me. If my manfriend's reading this, you know which Reddit meme cartoon archetype to picture me as.

The workout was a challenge, but not torture. Oh and as a bonus, I burned about six hundred calories—looking forward to replacing those at lunchtime. My arsenal of ridiculous pop and hip-hop music helped, as always. I had to bulk up my exercise playlist considerably to fill sixty-eight minutes, so I busted out some of my all-time favorite running tracks—Nelly / Ride Wit Me, Lyrics Born / Callin' Out, Skee-Lo / I Wish, plus a ton of Kylie and Gaga and Usher, Missy Elliot and Ludacris and George Michael. A motley, upbeat line-up. My manfriend, when he runs, does so to his beloved mournful, dirgey, lyric-less rock, which does not compute with me. He runs like he's on a vision quest. I run like I'm in my own music video. Whatever keeps your legs moving, I suppose.

Leg-Related Whatnots

Went for my first bike ride of the season this morning, twenty miles along Boston's North Shore. Before you start picturing me in spandex, my manfriend and I both have touring bikes, so we're more jeans-and-sneakers type cyclists, not jerseys-and-toe-clips, cruising not racing. Sadly, my bike computer (a little device on my handlebar that talks to sensor on my wheel and tells me my distance, time, calories, speed, etc.) needs a new battery, so I was in the dark on my vitals. I love anything that tracks progress…if I didn't own a scale I'd probably weigh a lot more than I do, as I'm very number-motivated. I have one of those annoying brains that fixates on quantifiable progress.

Couch to 10K app for iPhone/Touch

It was a nice ride, though my legs were a bit wonked from yesterday's run. Though I ran through the winter at the gym, my recent transition to outdoor running feels as rough as always, asphalt much less forgiving than a treadmill. I'd also forgotten how much tougher it is to run with the temp in the mid-forties, how much harsher it feels in my lungs and how streamy my eyes get from the wind. Still, nice to be outdoors, with spring finally feeling imminent. And the little park near my house has a gravel track running around it, which is exactly a half-mile long. Reasonably kind to joints and very handy for goal-setting.

And I have a new goal for this year. I'm not a distance runner. I'm a pretty ace sprinter and I can run a respectable enough 5K, and on a good day I average about a nine-minute mile. Not bad for a hobby runner. One of the reasons I've managed to stick with running in recent years, when in the past I haven't, is my iPod and its lovely apps. I completed the Couch to 5K program last year and really enjoyed it—it assigns you different run-and-walk workouts in increasingly challenging increments until you can run a full 5K (3.1 miles). Then the next time I had to buy new running shoes I gave the Nike+ system a spin. It's largely awesome, but not perfect. The pedometer effect it produces between an in-shoe sensor (sold separately and for specific models of Nikes, naturally) and my iPod is shockingly accurate, better than any actual pedometer I've ever used. It saves your workouts and stats and tells you your speed, whereas programs like Couch to 5K can only track your time…though I believe the latest Couch to 5K version will interact with the Nike+ program, a clunky marriage of a good training app with a good pedometer app.

But this year I'd like to train myself for a 10K…a solo one, if I don't stumble across a local charity run. The farthest I've ever run without stopping before is 5.1 miles, and every time I say things like, "I wish I was the kind of person who could run a marathon," my manfriend says, "You are, you just don't choose to." So this year I'll choose to be the kind of person who runs a 10K. At 6.2 miles it's within my reach, even if it's still twenty miles short of a marathon. Maybe in the fall I'll sign up for Salem's 6.66-mile Devil's Chase on Halloween morning. And maybe next year I'll find out if I'm fit for a half-marathon. The year after that…who knows.

Because I looove quantifiable progress, of course I just downloaded a new app. It's called Couch to 10K, though oddly enough it's made by a different developer than Couch to 5K…they must have snuck in there and stolen the name. But it got great ratings and I like the interface, and allegedly it works alongside Nike+ if you want it to. I scanned the workouts, and on Monday I'm going to give it a go, starting on Week Seven (since I'm not starting straight off the couch)—a sixty-eight-minute routine, alternating running and walking. It's so much easier (for me) to get jazzed about goals when they're broken into bite-sized chucks. The same goes for writing, actually. It'd be daunting to see only 100,000 shadowy, unwritten words spread out between you and the distant horizon…but break it down to one or two thousand a day, and before you know it you're typing The End. Well, maybe not before you know it…but eventually.

Anyhow, that's just me blathering about my new goal. I love goals—did you notice? According to this app's schedule, if I go at the pace they suggest (three training runs per week) I'll be ready to run a full 10K in about five weeks. If my janky knee doesn't get other ideas, that is. But I won't know if I don't try, and I won't likely try if I can't quantify. So here goes nothing. Well, here goes nothing but me on my wobbly legs, anyhow.

Sunday Confessional: My Favorite Bad Music

Obviously, music is far too subjective for us to really label anything irrefutably good or bad, but you know what I mean. I went to art school, where the majority tends to turn up its collective nose at manufactured pop tunes, that strain of music designed to be ear-wormish and profitable, to trick listeners into mistaking its catchiness for quality. Sort of the way fast food joints trick us into thinking their delicious fatty fare is preferable to nutritious, less exploding-in-my-mouth-with-flavors-spawned-just-off-the-New-Jersey-Turnpike options.

But I'll own it—I love shitty pop music. It started with Elvis Costello. My boy Elvis is not shitty by any stretch of the imagination, but when I heard "The Other Side of Summer" for the first time in eleventh grade whilst working at my local record store, I was hooked. Glib message or not, it was undeniably pop, yet I adored it. I'd long ago denounced the genre and had spent the years following that shift freebasing Nine Inch Nails and Tool and other dirgey, mopey, restless rock, and I was finally ready to enjoy some chirpy, commercial pop.

As I grew older and got more into exercising, I gravitated toward pop to accent my workouts. It's no fun jogging to Tori Amos. Also as I got older, I began to yearn for my favorite childhood albums, ones wrapped up in memories of my mom dancing me around the living room—The Monkees, Olivia Newton John, the Bee Gees, Debbie Gibson, Phil Collins, Tina Turner. Those examples are all on my iPod now and I listen to them regularly, probably driving my manfriend up the wall. I've also added some artists not favored by my parents, but burned into my earliest cultural memories nevertheless, such as ABBA and Prince.

My pod is equally rife with more current pop offenders, like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Rhianna, Beyoncé… Then a few that are suspended somewhere between new and nostalgic—Eminem, Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, NSYNC. Those are the ones I probably secretly liked when I was in college and TRL was still reflecting (or perhaps dictating) the popular tastes, but I refused to admit my enjoyment of them to myself or my peers. Thank goodness I've since gotten over myself.

Let me scan my pod and see what other dark confessions lurk in my Artists list… Ah yes! Anastacia, Craig David, Elton John, the Fugees, George Michael, Jamiroquai, John Denver, Kylie Minogue (a LOT of Kylie Minogue), Ludacris, Mariah Carey, Missy Elliot (a LOOOT of Missy Elliot), Nelly, ODB, Salt-n-Pepa, Sean Paul, Shakira, the Spice Girls, Usher, Will Smith…

So, I've shown you mine. Now show me yours. What dirty little secrets is your iPod harboring?

Free iPod Shuffle

Totally random post. I have a super little mint green iPod Shuffle that I don't use anymore. It works perfectly and it needs a good home! I'm giving away the Shuffle, its dock, original packaging and manual—everything but the headphones—to whichever commenter with a US mailing address I deem most worthy. I'll even ship it for free. Just tell me why you want it by next Saturday, October 2 at noon EST.