Good Headphones, Music are Critical to Getting Healthy
LAWRENCE, Kansas – During the time that I’ve been preoccupied with other projects to devote my full energies to keeping up with IPW, I’ve made the first major effort of my life to get into better shape. I’ve lost two grandfathers, a great uncle and others to heart disease, so sooner or later I was either going to need to do something about it or suffer irreversible consequences.
I opted for the former and, in Forrest Gump-esque fashion, one day I just decided to start walking. I had talked about it before but had only acted sporadically. Kicking off with a 7.2-mile walk the first day, I floored it at first before tapering off on distance in favor of more challenging terrain. All the while, I’d been making adjustments to the kinds of food I’d eat, trying to figure out ways to exploit various eating habits, etc.

The most amusing part of it, at least to me, is the fact that I don’t own a scale. In this economy, a scale simply isn’t an expense I’m willing to have. But inevitably when people have told me that I look like I’ve lost weight, they ask how much I’ve lost to which I say, “I don’t do scales.” I can tell if I feel better or not, and that’s all I need to know.
As for my walks, I probably push myself harder than is sometimes advisable during the hot Lawrence summer. My regular attire includes workout pants that I bought several years ago to combat the Syracuse cold, warmup pants or sweatpants, a sweatshirt and a hoodie. Plus, I wear a pair of tennis shoes that I bought the summer before I started college. In other words, it’s a bunch of stuff that I’ve had for a while. The only recent addition has been ankle and wrist weights that I’ll wear intermittently to add to the challenge. For me, the objective is to sweat as much as possible.
I walk almost daily, usually in the afternoon in order to get the full benefit of the day’s heat. For as flat as people generally think Kansas is, Lawrence is definitely an exception to that misconception. The KU campus has some wicked hills that I routinely hit up.

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But as important as all of those factors are, what gets me through the occasionally tortuous conditions is my music. Aside from the weights, the single most important expense was a pair of headphones that are comfortable, durable. The standard iPod headphones need not apply. In fact, I have a first generation iPod touch that came with my computer nearly two years ago. It’s practically useless to me for walking.

Instead I use my much older iPod (the 4th generation iPod) with a click wheel and a monochrome display that came with my first Mac in 2004 (a PowerBook G4 to be exact). While the computer’s internal hard drive failed long ago (largely my fault… I think), the iPod works as well as ever. And, most importantly, it has actual buttons that allow me to skip songs, play, pause and adjust volume simply by touch. Even better, I have a great hard plastic case for it. Those two things, and I’m set.
As for the music, I have a “traveling music” playlist, made up of a combination of metal, alternative rock, rap, hip-hop, R&B, rock and some pop, that I keep on shuffle so I have a little bit of everything depending on the point I’m at in my walk. On a flat straightaway, I can go for just about anything. Once I get to hills, it’s all rock and metal. After the hills, I tend to tone it down.
In general, I try to mix it up and add different stuff from time to time. But some of the bands I routinely keep in the rotation are AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Ke$ha, The Killers, Metallica, Muse, Queen, Rihanna and Stone Temple Pilots.
So that’s one of the major things I’ve been working on. That, the comic strip, the podcasts and a bunch of other things.

