Walking Motivation

Now that the sun is finally up in the morning when I wake up (which is 5:15 am), I started to take my morning walk outside again.

When I'm on the treadmill I watch TV (you have to to keep from going insane when you're walking in place).

But when I walk outside I like to listen to music. There's nothing like cranking up an old, favorite tune, to get you pumping along at 5:30 in the morning. This morning the first two songs my IPod spewed out were David Bowie's "Heroes" and Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend" (am I dating myself here?).

I started to listen to music while running (in the days when my knees would actually let me run), back in college in Boston. I remember getting my first Sony Walkman (really dating myself), and listening to cassettes of the Tom Tom Club and the Human League (really, really, really dating myself), while running along the Charles River.

A couple of decades later, I bought my first IPod and had my 20 something year old babysitter show me how to download music to it (but why the hell isn't there any Grateful Dead on ITunes?)

For me, there's something just really invigorating to listening to music (particularly classic tunes you never hear on the radio) while working out.

This morning when "Like the Weather" by 10,000 Maniacs started playing, I started pumping my 2 pound hand weights up and down to work my arms a bit more. I don't know why, it wasn't part of the plan, but the song just got me moving.