It's been a while!
I haven't abandoned you completely, but it has been busy these past few weeks. I've been training a bit for a team-builder my coworkers and I are doing August 4 in San Francisco. We're running The Giants Race to benefit Project Open Hand, a really cool organization that delivers meals to seniors and the critically ill. We got to choose between doing a 5K, 10K or half marathon. I knew better than to bite off a half marathon at this phase in my running journey, but I figured a 10K would be at least somewhat doable.
I've told you before I'm no Sporty Spice. Just because I walk to work nearly every day does not make me athletic. When I jog, it's a slow, hilarious situation, but I'm getting to an age where I don't really care what people think about me as I crawl by.
Because I signed up for this 10K at the first of the year, I've had ample time to prepare. And, in a sense, I have prepared quite a bit. Since I signed up for Map My Walk in April, I've logged 150 workouts. For me, this is sort of a miracle. When I got the email this week from Map My Walk congratulating me for this, I felt really proud. And the daily walks really add up. No matter if you walk, "wog," or jog the whole session, you will start feeling really great, and getting healthier, and that's awesome.
With just two weeks to go, I'm trying to kick it up a notch while preventing injury or heart failure. This morning, I woke with a goal of "running" at least three miles, and walking one more mile for a total of four. I'm in Texas, where it's about 250 degrees by 9am, so I left the house as early as possible and set off on my run, logging on to my two favorite tracking apps, Charity Miles and Map My Walk.
If it weren't for music, I would never make a mile, much less several of them. When I first started jogging years ago, my goal was to jog through three songs without stopping, for me, about enough time to get one mile under my belt. These days, I create playlists based on my distance goals.
My iPhone contains an extremely random selection of music that would make some of the young kids proud, and some of the stuff I own would make most everybody cringe. That's the smooth jazz portion. I'm not talking Kenny G or Yanni (or, as my husband calls him, Yanti). But I do fancy a little George Benson and Chuck Mangione. It's deliciously relaxing to me. Feel free to judge; everybody I know does. I'm comfortable with my smooth jazziness.
When I "run," I often listen to some really dirty rap. Sometimes I rap along, because I'm cool like that, and it helps keep my mind off of the fact that I'm pretty miserable, especially when it's hot out. Some of the dirty rap songs I own are the radio versions, mainly so my kids can rap along in the car. Yeah, we're that white family that raps together in the car, but we keep it G-rated. I like to think that a large portion of Jay-Z's fortune is based on the lame white families who buy the radio versions of his songs, so I'm sure he doesn't mind that they have to record two versions.
I remember when I was in about second grade, The Charlie Daniels Band's "Devil Went Down to Georgia" came out, and I wanted desperately to sing the entire song, especially the part that included the phrase "son of a bitch." So I approached my father and requested permission. Dad, an Army veteran and son of two potty mouths (God rest their souls, both of my grandparents were big-time cussers) - thought it over briefly and gave me the green light. I think he was kind of proud of me for asking.
I was on top of the world. I probably played that song over a thousand times, standing tall on a bench, acting out the devil versus the hillbilly story line, shouting, "I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I'm the best that's ever been!"
Perhaps this big life event gave me the confidence I have now to say what's on my mind. Hmm.
So while I'll water down some of the stuff I let my kids sing along to, for my runs, I buy the real deal. It raises my street cred a little. That said, I don't want to be caught saying the "N" word, and it's just all over these rap songs, kids. I grew up in East Texas, and that word --- one of the most distasteful, ugly words of all time - was thrown around quite a bit. Lucky for me, we never used that word in the home and found it abhorrent, but in an almost fully segregated town, the ugliness of Southern racism was part of my upbringing. That word showed up in jokes, in the homes of friends' houses, and overheard in dinner conversations. My mom had absolutely no problem confronting people who used that word and making them feel like complete idiots for doing so.
Dirty rap is a difficult thing to deal with if you want to buy it, listen to it ( in my opinion a lot of it is really good. I think Kanye West and Jay-Z are geniuses), and support it with out feeling a little racially squeamish. What do you do when it comes time to sing along? I'm guessing Paula Deen didn't have to answer the question, "But what about when you listened to dirty rap? What did you do then?" I'm also guessing Paula Deen isn't a huge rap fan, but who knows. Personally, I think she's just a sad bumpkin who admitted to using racist language -which isn't acceptable - but she also makes pies with a pound of butter, so she's not exactly on a mission to save lives or better the world.
So today, I was singing along to my mix of classic 70s rock and dirty rap, and I landed on a song with a lot of "N" words. And suddenly, I was struck with a flash of genius.
I would substitute the N word with "nipple!"
Let me tell you, friends, when you run past someone and are huffing and puffing and saying, "MJ" gone, our nipple dead," that is a really fantastic thing.
This new-found rapping system, along with a mid-run water break, and I was wildly motivated today. I knocked out three miles without much drama. By the time I finished four miles, I was almost home, and I stopped, took a left turn in the opposite direction of home, and kept on. I passed a young couple with a stroller, right around the time I was halfway through Jay-Z's explicit version of "Empire State of Mind." I'm super social, so I always say good morning to the people I lumber past, but this morning, about the time they passed me, I was in the middle of this:
"Nipple I be spiked up, I can tip a referee. Tell by my attitude I'm most definitely from..."
Given that the baby in the stroller was about six months old, I found that nipple reference pretty timely. Breastfeeding moms talk about nipples with such regularity I doubt the mom even noticed, and lucky for the dad, he had on headphones.
And with a little more smooth jazz, I was jogging up to my house, five miles behind me. This is the farthest I've gone since I started training in April. I did a dirty rap victory dance, right in front of my house. It was good times.
For those of you who think you can't walk, wog, jog or run, you totally can. I am proof of this. I am often lazy, overweight (but slowly shrinking), and much more motivated to sit on my butt than exercise. But it gets addictive, and it makes you feel great.
So slap on some headphones, download some dirty rap (or whatever music gets you going), and hit the streets!
