tryin' to tell you something 'bout my life

Since we finished with the madness of moving I've been trying to get to the gym to increase my endurance and maybe trade some fat for muscle. My motivation hasn't been quite as good as I'd like, but I'm slowly building up my ability. So far I'm sticking to the treadmill, no backpack with weight, just my usual incline and pace. For the last few weeks I've been trying to finish up the session by running for 2 or 3 minutes at half the incline. Running at my normal incline would probably put me in the hospital or morgue in quick order, but half incline is doable.

If I don't listen to music I get incredibly bored and stop after a short time. I started out with my '80's mix on random, but that got old after a few weeks. I've now added a few other mixes for variety and I found the dancing songs to be a really good treadmill mix. It isn't the dance music genre, it's music either about dancing or that I might like to dance to. The pace is kind of all over the place because when you're dancing you need some slow songs to keep from keeling over. Some of the songs are a bit slow for the walking and I have to stretch my stride out not to fall off the end of the treadmill, others I have to shorten by stride. But most of them make me want to run like a horse near a train.

I want to be able to do some hiking starting in early spring and do some real mountains this summer. That's the real goal. I'd like the mountains to not hurt.

( If you're interested... )