Wednesday

This post is about unrequited love and its near opposite, unrequited disdain. It's about making five minutes seem like forever. It pertains to my MP3 player. I run every single night. Lately, I've been pushing myself on the treadmill, breaking the previous night's records every day. I've progressed quickly to the edge of my ability this way. Good right? On even nights I sprint as fast as I can (not that fast) for almost a mile on the treadmill. On odd nights I run almost ten kilometers-per-hour for as far as I can (not that far). This is where the unrequited love comes in. I'm crushing hard on my MP3 player all over again. When I program it, I can forget the thud-thud-thud of my feet on the treadmill belt, taking my mind off the excruciating passage of time. There's nothing worse than paying attention while exercising. I run my "sprint" night distances all in a row, but the alternating "distance" nights are accomplished in three-quarter kilometer increments, with one-quarter k walks in between. This keeps me within my proper developmental range --cardiovascular-wise-- where my numbers won't spike or relax into diminishing returns. Five minutes running for every three minutes walking. This is where I get to the unrequited disdain, a feeling my MP3 player apparently harbors. See, I keep it on shuffle. During the walks, I get nice hard danceable stuff: Shonen Knife grinding out Cobra vs. Mongoose, Public Enemy trashing Arizona, the Cramps, Rob Zombie, Katie Jane Garside. You get the idea. But whenever I have to speed up to another run, suddenly I'm hearing the twang-twang-twanging nineteen-twenty blues in tinny mono, or the love-ballad from some unknown soundtrack, or Sinéad O'Connor whispering I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got a cappella, for god's sake. [Cavin]