A Song that is a Guilty Pleasure

So, back on my life blog, I tried to do a weekly blog post on the 30 Day Song Challenge. I kept it up for a while, but no one wanted to play along, so it recently died. I'm sad about it. Maybe I'll keep doing it alone, anyway. My favorite week was "A Song that is a Guilty Pleasure," and since it relates directly to running, here it is!

I chose this week's topic in honor of my marathon playlist, which also happens to be the reason for the lateness of this week's blog post. I know, I should have been a good blogger and written it ahead of time, but my mind was full of marathon-weekend excitement. More on that to come later this week!

My running playlist is hard evidence that I'm stuck in the 90s. I have everything from Beastie Boys to Kris Kross, Young MC to MC Hammer, Salt and Peppa to Vanilla Ice. And those aren't my guilty pleasures. I'm not the tiniest bit ashamed to admit that I totally rock out to Sisqo and Sir Mix-a-Lot while I run up the steep hills of Cincinnati.

Nope, not one little bit. In fact, I've even been known to get up and do my own rendition of Ice, Ice Baby on Karaoke night.

So what DOES constitute a guilty pleasure for me?

Ke$ha. Yes, Ke$ha. The "dollar sign girl." I remember the first time I heard one of her songs on the radio - it was that god-awful one about brushing teeth with bottles of jack and going for guys who look like Mick Jagger. I thought to myself "Who IS this lady, and WTF is WRONG with her??"

Then I saw her on TV, and my confusion grew.



It was like Mungojerrie meets Jem and the Holograms.



But after a while, I found myself tapping my hands on the steering wheel and singing along. Oh, no.

Then I heard it. "Take it Off." A total party song that I just KNEW my old clubberific roommate from college would have been all over if it had only been on the radio 10 years earlier.

And it was catchy. And it had a beat. A great beat for running. A great energy for running hills. And oh my goodness, it was so much fun to turn the car stereo speakers up way louder than a 29-year-old should and sing along to the (pretty awful) lyrics. (not with Charlie in the car, of course)

So here it is, for your amusement.



Because come on, we all know of a place that fits the description. Glitter on the floor? I'm so there. Well, not really. In fact, maybe I like this song so much because I never was a clubberific party girl. My roommate would spend her Friday and Saturday nights getting all dressed up in tube tops and halters, heavy eye-shadow, curlers, blah blah blah. I was perfectly content to drink cheap keg beer with the guys across the street, who were much more Dave Matthews than Ke$ha.

In real life, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to admit that I'm a closet Ke$ha fan. Please don't tell my husband that I spent 99 cents to download the single. He still thinks it was Rage Against the Machine.

Insanity is a Humbling Experience

18 days ago, I ran 26.2 miles in 4:13:00. A week later, we popped in Disk 1 of the Insanity workout program. I felt pretty good about my fitness level and my endurance. I was about to have my ass handed to me.

If you're not familiar with Insanity, it's another program from the Beachbody people, the company that produced my beloved P90X. Insanity is a completely different type of hell than either P90X or marathon running. It's based on High Intensity Interval Training, which roughly translates to "Shaun T is going to make you work until you can't feel your legs and you melt, a whimpering heap, into the puddles of sweat that have collected on your basement floor."



These workout tapes are deceptive. The first month includes a set of workouts that are only about 40 minutes long. 40 minutes of cardio work? That's nothing. I can do that in my sleep. Yeaaaaaah, not so much.

The program started with a tape called Plyometric Cardio Circuit. Yes, PLYOMETRICS. The same type of exercise that caused me great embarrassment during P90X. We pushed play, and Shaun T started right in with the workout. We jogged in place, did a million jumping jacks, a million more heisman plyo moves, some heisman 123s, butt kicks, high knees, and mummy kicks. We finished the first circuit, which was about 3 minutes worth of ass-kicking, and then got a 30 second water break. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. 10 minutes and two repetitions later, and I'm already soaking wet from head to toe and ready to die. And that was just the warm up. 30 minutes later, we were ending with Level 1 Drills - stand up, jump your feet back into plank, do 4 push-ups, 8 counts of plank run, jump your feet back in, jump up, and repeat until you puke.

Like this, but he's doing it very slowly for the purposes of demonstration.



We won't even talk about the Skis and In and Outs.

Wow. WOW. I thought I was in better shape than that.

Because I've been asked, I haven't decided if I'm going to blog about Insanity the way I did about P90X. I'm leaning more toward doing some kind of "Fitness Friday" theme, more generic posts about things I'm doing and things I like and articles that I've read about health and fitness. Maybe every other week. It's something that I find interesting, but not something that I'd want to dedicate an entire blog to. Besides, I'm not really all that hard-core. I still like to sit on my couch and watch TV and eat junk food. And drink beer. Can't forget about the beer.