Carry me home

All the small things
True care truth brings

I exercise to escape. To take on challenges that end in banana ice cream or chocolate milk. To be “healthy”. To protect my body from aging. (To live forever.) [To live well forever.] To have something to work toward, when degrees are useless. To meditate more fully than while sitting with my eyes closed, focussed on the breath. To fill my time with something good for me in a cycle of the 40-hour workweek.

I’ll take one lift
Your ride best trip

I’ve taken up running. I’ve considered myself a new, low-ranking runner for at least five years. I was a swimmer growing up, and it was absolutely central to my identity by the time I finished my first summer in the outdoor league, kicking ass in the 6-and-under age group. But running is different, because I don’t want to be one of those runners. You know, those annoying ones? Who talk about running a lot, and are very annoying, for completely vague reasons that have a lot to do with jealousy and the sad truth that most of us have no self esteem.

Always I know
You’ll be at my show
Watching, waiting,
Commiserating

I’ll always be one of those people. The kind of people who take up something new, spend some time doing it, and read everything they can about it. They develop opinions about what is reasonable, and compare themselves against others who do that thing. When you ask them how they’re doing, and what’s new in their life, they struggle to have an answer, then realize they’ve been obsessing over a new hobby, and proceed to tell you all about it.

That last part might just be me.

Say it ain’t so
I will not go
Turn the lights off
Carry me home

My self-discipline is enforced by a schedule I found on the internet, and modified do something more to my liking. I know what’s best for myself, even when I don’t. I run two days a week, do yoga one day a week, a fitness class one more day, and run on the eliptical to round out five days. In September I’ll go up to three running days per week: I have a half marathon to run in November.

This schedule is exhausting, and my baseline is exhaustion. If I socialize outside my house one or two nights in a week, it takes several days to recover, because my physical and social exhaustions synergize and all I want to do is lie in bed and tell the cat how cute he is.

Late night come home
Work sucks, I know
She left me roses by the stairs
Surprises let me know she cares

Every group fitness class I’ve attended has had some sort of ridiculous music playing. When I swam growing up, I would sing songs in my head for hours on end. I would pick the longest songs I could think of, and memorize the words. Or I would memorize an entire CD, and play it in my mind during the practices I wished I could stop attending. These days, I run without music playing, and I power through bad rap and europop during boot camp classes. I lose track of time in yoga, but know when things are starting to cool down when that one song that sounds like the other song from Garden State comes on.

Music is less immediate to me now as it was when I was younger, but it can take me right back. When Baba O’Riley comes on, you can bet a dollar that I know when the electric guitar chords will start. I know that adolescent authenticity lessons taught me I’m supposed to hear Lenny Kravitz singing “American Woman” and storm away because it isn’t the original The Guess Who. I still know all the words to those four Red Hot Chili Peppers songs, even the words I never knew in the first place.

Usually I prefer to be painfully aware of how hard I’m working when I’m working out. Knowing what I’m doing, what I’ve done, and what I’m going to do is a soothing quasi-mantra for the task. But every once in awhile, there are some songs that make it impossible not to sing along.