Jase! No Retreat! No Surrender!

Posted on June 16, 2005 at 7:32 AM in 'Dear Diary' with tags 'running, exercise, andres, courtney, natalia, ipod, music, mp3, jingta'

When Andrés got down here last Monday, he finally convinced me to start running, and we've gone running around the neighborhood nearly every day since he arrived. There is a one-mile-long loop around my block, so for now we've just been doing one lap of that each day. I'm already noticing a difference; the first day, I ended up walking most of the way, and it took us something like 15-20 minutes to make it around the block. Yesterday, we jogged nearly all of it, stopping only twice to walk and catch our breaths, and it only took about 9 minutes. It's a challenge to overcome my aversion every day and force myself to go running, but it feels good later to know that you've done something worthwhile, and it's satisfying to see the improvement in ability. It has helped a lot to have Andrés pushing me each day when I resist, and by now I think I've got the momentum required, so it should be no problem to keep it up once he leaves on Friday. Perhaps I should wire something up so that you can give me an electric shock by clicking a button on my website, so people can punish me if I start to slack off in the future :)

One of the days this weekend that Courtney was here, she and Natalia went out with us. Courtney didn't have sneakers or anything with her, so she and Natalia rode bikes, like R.J. in No Retreat, No Surrender, except with much less breakdancing.

It's funny — This is the first time that the greater bulk and weight of my MP3 player has actually been a problem. When you're driving places or walking with a bookbag on your back, it doesn't make a difference, but since we've started running, I've been envying Jing-Ta's iPod Shuffle. It'd be nice to have something really lightweight that I could throw around my neck or something and forget about. Once I get a little better off financially, I might buy the smallest, cheapest one available, just to have something small to take with me when I go running. I need to do some research, because I know there are tons of MP3 players on the market now, and there are probably other small, light players out there that don't carry Apple's markup. I don't really care about it being pretty and white, I just want something I can forget about.

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Comments

Posted by Antonio Rippe 56 minutes later

Apple may have a markup, but the price really isn't that bad. 150$ for a 1GB, lightweight, dependable player?

I'm also hitting the ground running here, and what I got was an armband for my 20GB iPod. It still is a bit bulky, but it helps.

Posted by Scott 1 hour, 20 minutes later

1) Don't run every day. You need to have rest days...for real. Run 3, with the third being a very slow, easy pace and then take the next day off. You'll see results quickly running every day after never having really run, but you'll also very quickly hit a point where you start getting worse if you don't give your body time to recover.

2) Sandisk makes a great 1 GB flash memory MP3 player for ~ $160 and unlike the iPod shuffle, you can actually select what song you want to play and it doesn't have to be random if you don't want! It does use a AAA battery, but there are other models out there which have an internal rechargeable. (I believe Sony has one that supposedly has a 50hr life due to its clever usage of an OLCD screen.)

Posted by Dan 13 hours, 32 minutes later

You're right, if I were going to spend $150 on the 1GB Shuffle, I'd probably spend the extra $10 for the Sandisk one you described. But the one I had my eye on was the $99 512mb Shuffle. I've already got a 60gb mp3 player which I love, so I don't need a unit with lots of features, super long battery life, etc. I just want something small, light, and cheap. I also like that auto-fill feature of the Shuffle, where you just plug it into the USB port and it is automatically loaded with a random selection of tracks. I don't want to have to stop and think about what I want to listen to each time before I go out. I just want something that will keep me entertained for an hour to take my mind off of the excercise I'm trying to impose on my body :) So if I find something significantly less than $100, I'd take that over the Shuffle, but I'm not really looking for anything more expensive. Still, I will check out that Sandisk unit and find out more about it. I do like the idea of actually being able to select a specific song if I want to :)

Posted by Jenn 4 hours, 35 minutes later

I have been running for about two or three months now, and I remember all of these feelings. I improved very quickly, and as long as I pace myself, I can run for some distance now. I think you will notice a different in your body very quickly as well. YMMV, but I had been weight training for several months with little to no noticeable effect when I started running. I started becoming much slimmer and dropping weight right afterwards.

I understand what Scott says about running, but I am going to advise you not to heed his advice just this once. If you are going to make a habit of running, you need to do it every day for awhile, especially since you haven't had an exercise routine in a long time. I know my own kind-- once you start taking a day off in between, it becomes soooo much easier to make that two... and then three... At least for awhile, I would run every day. And then perhaps you could alternate with some sort of short weight training on other days?

Posted by Dan 10 hours, 18 minutes later

Yeah, I think I will try and keep going as close to every day as possible for now, and once it has become a habit, I can settle into a routine incorporating rest days like Scott described above.

Posted by Bryan 1 day, 6 hours later

You know, they also have the Nomad MuVo 256 MB units for about $60. I dunno if they've come out with a 512MB version yet, but if you're just looking for something that will hold an hour of music... plus, the Zen version of Notmad already supports it :) 1.1 oz... tempting :)

Posted by Bryan 3 minutes later

After some quick research, looks like the 512 is about $100 or $85 brand new off of ebay.

Posted by Dan 48 minutes later

Good find. I'll definitely look into those :)